
\%%B 



LECTURES 



CHIEFLY <XN THE 



DRAMATIC LITERATURE 



AGE OF ELIZABETH. 









LECTURES 



CHIEFLY ON THE 



DRAMATIC LITERATURE 



OF THE 



AGE OF ELIZABETH. 

Qtimw at ti)t "Sjuwp ^Institution* 
BY WILLIAM HAZLITT. 



i s> 



*& 



Not rough and barren are the •winding -ways 
*& * JY*^--" Of hoar Antiquity, but strewn with flowers." 



T. WAHTON. 




'WASHg 

LONDON: 

STODART AND STEUART, 81, STRAND; 

AND BELL AND BRADFUTE, EDINBURGH. 
1820. 



ERRATUM. 

Page 18, 1. 20, for " wildnesses," read wildernesses. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 

PAGE 

Introductory. — General View of the Subject .... 1 

LECTURE II. 

On the Dramatic Writers contemporary with Shake- 
spear, Lyly, Mario w, Hey wood, Middleton, and 
Rowley '38 

LECTURE III. 

On Marston, Chapman, Deckar, and Webster . . 93 

LECTURE IV. 

On Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Ford, and 

Massinger 139 

LECTURE V. 

On single Plays, Poems, &c, the Four P's, the Return 
from Parnassus, Gammer Gurton's Needle, and 
other Works 188 

LECTURE VI. 

On Miscellaneous Poems, F. Beaumont, P. Fletcher, 
Drayton, Daniel, &c, Sir P. Sidney's Arcadia, and 
Sonnets 224 

LECTURE VII. 
Character of Lord Bacon's Works — compared as to 

style with Sir Thomas Brown and Jeremy Taylor 279 



viii CONTENTS. 

LECTURE VIII. 

PAGE 

On the Spirit of Ancient and Modern Literature — on 
the German Drama, contrasted with that of the 
Age of Elizabeth 315 



LECTURES 



ON THE 



AGE OF ELIZABETH, &c 



LECTURE I.— INTRODUCTORY, 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

THE age of Elizabeth was distinguished, be- 
yond, perhaps, any other in our history, by a 
number of great men, famous in different ways, 
and whose names have come down to us with 
unblemished honours ; statesmen, warriors, di- 
vines, scholars, poets, and philosophers, Ra- 
leigh, Drake, Coke, Hooker, and higher and 
more sounding still, and still more frequent in 
our mouths, Shakespear, Spenser, Sidney, Ba- 
con, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, men whom 
fame has eternised in her long and lasting scroll, 
and who, by their words and acts, were bene- 
factors of their country, and ornaments of human 
nature. Their attainments of different kinds 
bore the same general stamp, and it was ster- 



2 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

ling : what they did, had the mark of their age 
and country upon it. Perhaps the genius of 
Great Britain (if I may so speak without offence 
or flattery), never shone out fuller or brighter, or 
looked more like itself, than at this period. Our 
writers and great men had something in them 
that savoured of the soil from which they grew • 
they were not French, they were not Dutch, or 
German, or Greek, or Latin; they were truly 
English. They did not look out of themselves to 
see what they should be ; they sought for truth 
and nature, and found it in themselves. There 
was no tinsel, and but little art ; they were not 
the spoiled children of affectation and refine- 
ment, but a bold, vigorous, independent race of 
thinkers, with prodigious strength and energy, 
with none but natural grace, and heartfelt unob- 
trusive delicacy. They were not at all sophisti- 
cated. The mind of their country was great in 
them, and it prevailed. With their learning and 
unexampled acquirement, they did not forget 
that they were men : with all their endeavours 
after excellence, they did not lay aside the strong 
original bent and character of their minds. What 
they performed was chiefly nature's handy-work; 
and time has claimed it for his own. — To these, 
however, might be added others not less learned, 
nor with a scarce less happy vein, but less fortu- 
nate in the event, who, though as renowned in 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 3 

their day, have sunk into " mere oblivion," and 
of whom the only record (but that the noblest ) 
is to be found in their works. Their works and 
their names, " poor, poor dumb names," are all 
that remains of such men as Webster, Deckar, 
Marston, Alarlow, Chapman, Hey wood, Mid- 
dleton, and Rowley ! " How lov'd, how honour'd 
once, avails them not :" though they were the 
friends and fellow-labourers of Shakespear, shar- 
ing his fame and fortunes with him, the rivals 
of Jonson, and the masters of Beaumont and 
Fletcher's well-sung woes ! They went out one 
by one unnoticed, like evening lights ; or were 
swallowed up in the headlong torrent of puri- 
tanic zeal which succeeded, and swept away 
every thing in its unsparing course, throwing 
up the wrecks of taste and genius at random, and 
at long fitful intervals, amidst the painted gew- 
gaws and foreign frippery of the reign of 
Charles II. and from which we are only now re- 
covering the scattered fragments and broken 
images to erect a temple to true Fame ! How 
long, before it will be completed? 

If I can do any thing to rescue some of these 
writers from hopeless obscurity, and to do them 
right, without prejudice to well-deserved reputa- 
tion, I shall have succeeded in what I chiefly 
propose. I shall not attempt, indeed, to adjust 

b2 



4 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

the spelling, or restore the pointing, as if the 
genius of poetry lay hid in errors of the press, 
but leaving these weightier matters of criticism 
to those who are more able and willing to bear 
the burden, try to bring out their real beauties 
to the eager sight, " draw the curtain of Time, 
and shew the picture of Genius," restraining my 
own admiration within reasonable bounds ! 

There is not a lower ambition, a poorer way 
of thought, than that which would confine all 
excellence, or arrogate its final accomplishment 
to the present, or modern times. We ordinarily 
speak and think of those who had the misfortune 
to write or live before us, as labouring under 
very singular privations and disadvantages in 
not having the benefit of those improvements 
which we have made, as buried in the grossest 
ignorance, or the slaves "of poring pedantry;" 
and we make a cheap and infallible esti- 
mate of their progress in civilization upon a 
graduated scale of perfectibility, calculated from 
the meridian of our own times. If we have 
pretty well got rid of the narrow bigotry that 
would limit all sense or virtue to our own coun- 
try, and have fraternized, like true cosmopolites, 
with our neighbours and contemporaries, we have 
made our self-love amends by letting the genera- 
tion we live in engross nearly all our admiration 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 5 

and by pronouncing a sweeping sentence of bar- 
barism and ignorance on our ancestry backwards, 
from the commencement ( as near as can be ) of 
the nineteenth, or the latter end of the eighteenth 
century. From thence we date a new era, the 
dawn of our own intellect and that of the world, 
like " the sacred influence of light" glimmering 
on the confines of Chaos and old night ; new 
manners rise, and all the cumbrous " pomp of 
elder days" vanishes, and is lost in worse than 
Gothic darkness. Pavilioned in the glittering 
pride of our superficial accomplishments and 
upstart pretensions, we fancy that every thing 
beyond that magic circle is prejudice and error; 
and all, before the present enlightened period, 
but a dull and useless blank in the great map of 
time. We are so dazzled with the gloss and 
novelty of modern discoveries, that we cannot 
take into our mind's eye the vast expanse, the 
lengthened perspective of human intellect, and a 
cloud hangs over and conceals its loftiest monu- 
ments, if they are removed to a little distance 
from us — the cloud of our own vanity and short- 
sightedness. The modern sciolist stultifies all 
understanding but his own, and that which he 
conceives like his own. We think, in this age 
of reason and consummation of philosophy, be- 
cause we knew nothing twenty or thirty years 
ago, and began to think then for the first time in 



6 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

our lives, that the rest of mankind were in the 
same predicament, and never knew any thing 
till we did ; that the world had grown old in 
sloth and ignorance, had dreamt out its long 
minority of five thousand years in a dozing state, 
and that it first began to wake out of sleep, to 
rouse itself, and look about it, startled by the 
light of our unexpected discoveries, and the 
noise we made about them. Strange error of 
our infatuated self-love ! Because the clothes 
we remember to have seen worn when we were 
children, are now out of fashion, and our grand- 
mothers were then old women, we conceive with 
magnanimous continuity of reasoning, that it 
must have been much worse three hundred years 
before, and that grace, youth, and beauty are 
things of modern date — as if nature had ever 
been old, or the sun had first shone on our folly 
and presumption. Because, in a word, the last 
generation, when tottering off the stage, were 
not so active, so sprightly, and so promising as 
we were, we begin to imagine, that people for- 
merly must have crawled about in a feeble, torpid 
state, like flies in winter, in a sort of dim twilight 
of the understanding; " nor can we think what 
thoughts they could conceive," in the absence of 
all those topics that so agreeably enliven and 
diversify our conversation and literature, mistak- 
ing the imperfection of our knowledge for the 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 7 

defect of their organs, as if it was necessary for 
us to have a register and certificate of their 
thoughts, or as if, because they did not see with 
our eyes, hear with our ears, and understand 
with our understandings, they could hear, see, 
and understand nothing. A falser inference 
could not be drawn, nor one more contrary to 
the maxims and cautions of a wise humanity. 
" Think," says Shakespear, the prompter of good 
and true feelings, " there's livers out of Britain." 
So there have been thinkers, and great and 
sound ones, before our time. They had the 
same capacities that we have, sometimes greater 
motives for their exertion, and, for the most 
part, the same subject-matter to work upon. 
What we learn from nature, we may hope to do 
as well as they; what we learn from them, we 
may in general expect to do worse. — What is, 
I think, as likely as any thing to cure us of this 
overweening admiration of the present, and un- 
mingled contempt for past times, is the looking 
at the finest old pictures; at Raphael's heads, 
at Titian's faces, at Claude's landscapes. We 
have there the evidence of the senses, without 
the alterations of opinion or disguise of language. 
We there see the blood circulate through the 
veins (long before it was known that it did so), 
the same red and white " by nature's own sweet 
and cunning hand laid on," the same thoughts 



8 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

passing through the mind and seated on the lips, 
the same blue sky, and glittering sunny vales, 
ei where Pan, knit with the Graces and the Hours 
in dance, leads on the eternal spring." And we 
begin to feel, that nature and the mind of man 
are not a thing of yesterday, as we had been led 
to suppose ; and that " there are more things 
between heaven and earth, than were ever 
dreamt of in our philosophy." — Or grant that we 
improve, in some respects, in a uniformly progres- 
sive ratio, and build, Babel-high, on the foun- 
dation of other men's knowledge, as in matters 
of science and speculative inquiry, where by going 
often over the same general ground, certain ge- 
neral conclusions have been arrived at, and in 
the number of persons reasoning on a given sub- 
ject, truth has at last been hit upon, and long- 
established error exploded; yet this does not ap- 
ply to cases of individual power and knowledge, 
to a million of things beside, in which we are 
still to seek as much as ever, and in which we 
can only hope to find, by going to the fountain- 
head of thought and experience. We are quite 
wrong in supposing (as we are apt to do), that 
we can plead an exclusive title to wit and 
wisdom, to taste and genius, as the net produce 
and <ilear reversion of the age we live in, and 
that all we have to do to be great, is to despise 
those who have gone before us as nothing. 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 9 

Or even if we admit a saving clause in this 
sweeping proscription, and do not make the rule 
absolute, the very nature of the exceptions shews 
the spirit in which they are made. We single 
out one or two striking instances, say Shakespear 
or Lord Bacon, which we would fain treat as 
prodigies, and as a marked contrast to the rude- 
ness and barbarism that surrounded them. These 
we delight to dwell upon and magnify; the 
praise and wonder we heap upon their shrines, 
are at the expence of the time in which they 
lived, and would leave it poor indeed. We 
make them out something more than human, 
' matchless, divine, what we will," so to make 
them no rule for their age, and no infringement 
of the abstract claim to superiority which we set 
up. Instead of letting them reflect any lustre, 
or add any credit to the period of history to 
which they rightfully belong, we only make use 
of their example to insult and degrade it still 
more beneath our own level. 

It is the present fashion to speak with venera- 
tion of old English literature ; but the homage 
we pay to it is more akin to the rites of supersti- 
tion, than the worship of true religion. Our 
faith is doubtful ; our love cold ; our knowledge 
little or none. We now and then repeat the names 
of some of the old writers by rote ; but we are 
shy of looking into their works. Though we 



10 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

seem disposed to think highly of them, and to 
give them every credit for a masculine and ori- 
ginal vein of thought, as a matter of literary 
courtesy and enlargement of taste, we are afraid 
of coming to the proof, as too great a trial of 
our candour and patience. We regard the en- 
thusiastic admiration of these obsolete authors, 
or a desire to make proselytes to a belief in their 
extraordinary merits, as an amiable weakness, a 
pleasing delusion ; and prepare to listen to some 
favourite passage, that may be referred to in sup- 
port of this singular taste, with an incredulous 
smile ; and are in no small pain for the result of 
the hazardous experiment ; feeling much the 
same awkward condescending disposition to pa- 
tronise these first crude attempts at poetry and 
lispings of the Muse, as when a fond parent 
brings forward a bashful child to make a display 
of its wit or learning. We hope the best, put 
a good face on the matter, but are sadly afraid 
the thing cannot answer. — Dr. Johnson said of 
these writers generally, that " they were sought 
after because they were scarce, and would not 
have been scarce, had they been much esteemed." 
His decision is neither true history nor sound 
criticism. They were esteemed, and they de- 
served to be so. 

One cause that might be pointed out here, as 
having contributed to the long-continued neglect 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 1 1 

of our earlier writers, lies in the very nature of our 
academic institutions, which unavoidably neutra- 
lizes a taste for the productions of native genius, 
estranges the mind from the history of our own 
literature, and makes it in each successive age 
like a book sealed. The Greek and Roman 
classics are a sort of privileged text-books, the 
standing order of the day, in a University edu- 
cation, and leave little leisure for a competent 
acquaintance with, or due admiration of, a whole 
host of able writers of our own, who are suf- 
fered to moulder in obscurity on the shelves of 
our libraries, with a decent reservation of one or 
two top-names, that are cried up for form's sake, 
and to save the national character. Thus we 
keep a few of these always ready in capitals, and 
strike off the rest, to prevent the tendency to a 
superfluous population in the republic of letters ; 
in other words, to prevent the writers from be- 
coming more numerous than the readers. The 
ancients are become eEete in this respect, they 
no longer increase and multiply ; or if they have 
imitators among us, no one is expected to read, 
and still less to admire them. It is not possible 
that the learned professors and the reading pub- 
lic should clash in this way, or necessary for 
them to use any precautions against each other. 
But it is not the same with the living languages, 
where there is danger of being overwhelmed by 



12 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

the crowd of competitors; and pedantry has com- 
bined with ignorance to cancel their unsatisfied 
claims. 

We affect to wonder at Shakespear, and one 
or two more of that period, as solitary instances 
upon record ; whereas it is our own dearth of 
information that makes the waste ; for there is 
no time more populous of intellect, or more pro- 
lific of intellectual wealth, than the one we are 
speaking of. Shakespear did not look upon him- 
self in this light, as a sort of monster of poetical 
genius, or on his contemporaries as " less than 
smallest dwarfs," when he speaks with true, not 
false modesty, of himself and them, and of his 
wayward thoughts, "desiring this man's art, and 
that man's scope." We fancy that there were 
no such men, that could either add to or take any 
thing away from him, but such there were. 
He indeed overlooks and commands the admira- 
tion of posterity, but he does it from the table- 
land of the age in which he lived. He towered 
above his fellows, " in shape and gesture proudly 
eminent ;" but he was one of a race of giants, the 
tallest, the strongest, the most graceful, and 
beautiful of them ; but it was a common and a 
noble brood. He was not something sacred and 
aloof from the vulgar herd of men, but shook 
hands with nature and the circumstances of the 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 13 

time, and is distinguished from his immediate 
contemporaries, not in kind, but in degree and 
greater variety of excellence. He did not form 
a class or species by himself, but belonged to a 
class or species. His age was necessary to him ; 
nor could he have been wrenched from his place 
in the edifice of which he was so conspicuous a 
part, without equal injury to himself and it. 
Mr. Wordsworth says of Milton, that " his soul 
was like a star, and dwelt apart." This cannot 
be said with any propriety of Shakespear, who 
certainly moved in a constellation of bright lu- 
minaries, and " drew after him- a third part of 
the heavens." If we allow, for argument's sake 
(or for truth's, which is better), that he was in 
himself equal to all his competitors put together ; 
yet there was more dramatic excellence in that 
age. than in the whole of the period that has 
elapsed since. If his contemporaries, with their 
united strength, would hardly make one Shake- 
spear, certain it is that all his successors would 
not make half a one. With the exception of a 
single writer, Otway, and of a single play of his 
(Venice Preserved), there is nobody in tragedy 
and dramatic poetry (I do not here speak of 
comedy) to be compared to the great men of the 
age of Shakespear, and immediately after. They 
are a mighty phalanx of kindred spirits closing 
him round, moving in the same orbit, and im- 



14 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

pelled by the same causes in their whirling and 
eccentric career. They had the same faults and 
the same excellences ; the same strength and 
depth and richness, the same truth of character, 
passion, imagination, thought and language, 
thrown, heaped, massed together without careful 
polishing or exact method, but poured out in 
unconcerned profusion from the lap of nature and 
genius in boundless and unrivalled magnificence. 
The sweetness of Deckar, the thought of Marston, 
the gravity of Chapman, the grace of Fletcher 
and his young-eyed wit, Jonson's learned sock, 
the flowing vein of Middleton, Hey wood's ease, 
the pathos of Webster, and Marlow's deep de- 
signs, add a double lustre to the sweetness, 
thought, gravity, grace, wit, artless nature, 
copiousness, ease, pathos, and sublime concep- 
tions of Shakespear's Muse. They are indeed 
the scale by which we can best ascend to the 
true knowledge and love cf him.. Our admira- 
tion of them does not lessen our relish for him : 
but, on the contrary, increases and confirms it. — ■ 
For such an extraordinary combination and 
development of fancy and genius many causes 
may be assigned ; and we may seek for the chief 
of them in religion, in politics, in the circum- 
stances of the time, the recent diffusion of letters, 
in local situation, and in the character of the men 
who adorned that period, and availed themselves 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 15 

so nobly of the advantages placed within their 
reach. 

I shall here attempt to give a general sketch 
of these causes, and of the manner in which they 
operated to mould and stamp the poetry of the 
country at the period of which I have to treat ; 
independently of incidental and fortuitous causes, 
for which there is no accounting, but which, 
after all, have often the greatest share in deter- 
mining the most important results. 

The first cause I shall mention, as contri- 
buting to this general effect, was the Reforma- 
tion, which had just then taken place. This 
event gave a mighty impulse and increased 
activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated the 
inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout 
Europe. The effect of the concussion w r as ge- 
neral ; but the shock was greatest in this country. 
It toppled down the full-grown, intolerable abuses 
of centuries at a blow ; heaved the ground from 
under the feet of bigotted faith and slavish obe- 
dience; and the roar and dashing of opinions, 
loosened from their accustomed hold, might be 
heard like the noise of an angry sea, and has 
never yet subsided. Germany first broke the 
spell of misbegotten fear, and gave the watch- 
word ; but England joined the shout, and echoed 



16 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

it back with her island voice, from her thousand 
cliffs and craggy shores, in a longer and a louder 
strain. With that cry, the genius of Great 
Britain rose, and threw down the gauntlet to the 
nations. There was a mighty fermentation : the 
waters were out ; public opinion was in a state of 
projection. Liberty was held out to all to think 
and speak the truth. Men's brains were busy ; 
their spirits stirring ; their hearts full ; and their 
hands not idle. Their eyes were opened to ex- 
pect the greatest things, and their ears burned 
with curiosity and zeal to know the truth, that 
the truth migrht make them free. The death- 
blow which had been struck at scarlet vice and 
bloated hypocrisy, loosened their tongues, and 
made the talismans and love-tokens of Popish 
superstition, with which she had beguiled her 
followers and committed abominations with the 
people, fall harmless from their necks. 

The translation of the Bible was the chief 
engine in the great work. It threw open, by a 
secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and 
morality, which had been there locked up as in 
a shrine. It revealed the visions of the prophets, 
and conveyed the lessons of inspired teachers 
(such they were thought) to the meanest of 
the people. It gave them a common interest 
in the common cause. Their hearts burnt with- 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. \7 

in them as they read. It gave a mind to the 
people, by giving them common subjects of 
thought and feeling. It cemented their union 
of character and sentiment : it created endless 
diversity and collision of opinion. They found 
objects to employ their faculties, and a motive 
in the magnitude of the consequences attach- 
ed to them, to exert the utmost eagerness in 
the pursuit of truth, and the most daring in- 
trepidity in maintaining it. Religious contro- 
versy sharpens the understanding by the subtlety 
and remoteness of the topics it discusses, and 
braces the will by their infinite importance. We 
perceive in the history of this period a nervous 
masculine intellect. No levity, no feebleness, 
no indifference ; or if there were, it is a relaxa- 
tion from the intense activity which gives a tone 
to its general character. But there is a gravity 
approaching to piety ; a seriousness of impression, 
a conscientious severity of argument, an habitual 
fervour and enthusiasm in their mode of hand- 
ling almost every subject. The debates of the 
schoolmen were sharp and subtle enough ; but 
they wanted interest and grandeur, and were 
besides confined to a few : they did not affect the 
general mass of the community. But the Bible 
was thrown open to all ranks and conditions 
" to run and read," with its wonderful table of 
contents from Genesis to the Revelations, Every 



18 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

village in England would present the scene so 
well described in Burns's Cotter's Saturday 
Night. I cannot think that all this variety and 
weight of knowledge could be thrown in all 
at once upon the mind of a people, and not 
make some impression upon it, the traces of 
which might be discerned in the manners and 
literature of the age. For to leave more disput- 
able points, and take only the historical parts of 
the Old Testament, or the moral sentiments of 
the New, there is nothing like them in the power 
of exciting awe and admiration, or of rivetting 
sympathy. We see what Milton has made of 
the account of the Creation, from the manner in 
which he has treated it, imbued and impreg- 
nated with the spirit of the time of which we 
speak. Or what is there equal (in that romantic 
interest and patriarchal simplicity which goes to 
the heart of a country, and rouses it, as it were, 
from its lair in wastes and wildnesses) equal to 
the story of Joseph and his Brethren, of Rachael 
and Laban, of Jacob's Dream, of Ruth and Boaz, 
the descriptions in the book of Job, the delive- 
rance of the Jews out of Egypt, or the account of 
their captivity and return from Babylon ? There 
is in all these parts of the Scripture, and num- 
berless more of the same kind, to pass over the 
Orphic hymns of David, the prophetic denuncia- 
tions of Isaiah, or the gorgeous visions of Eze- 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 19 

kiel, an originality, a vastness of conception, a 
depth and tenderness of feeling, and a touching 
simplicity in the mode of narration, which he 
who does not feel, need be made of no " pene- 
trable stuff." There is something in the charac- 
ter of Christ too (leaving religious faith quite out 
of the question ) of more sweetness and majesty, 
and more likely to work a change in the mind of 
man, by the contemplation of its idea alone, than 
any to be found in history, whether actual or 
feigned. This character is that of a sublime hu- 
manity, such as was never seen on earth before, 
nor since. This shone manifestly both in his 
words and actions. We see it in his washing 
the Disciples' feet the night before his death, 
that unspeakable instance of humility and love, 
above all art, all meanness, and all pride, and in 
the leave he took of them on that occasion, " My 
peace I give unto you, that peace w r hich the 
world cannot give, give I unto you ;" and in his 
last commandment, that " they should love one 
another." Who can read the account of his be- 
haviour on the cross, when turning to his mo- 
ther he said, " Woman, behold thy son," and 
to the Disciple John, i; Behold thy mother," and 
" from that hour that Disciple took her to his own 
home," without having his heart smote within 
him ! We see it in his treatment of the woman 
taken in adultery, and in his excuse for the wo- 

c 2 



20 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

man who poured precious ointment on his gar- 
ment as an offering of devotion and love, which 
is here all in all. His religion was the religion 
of the heart. We see it in his discourse with 
the Disciples as they walked together towards 
Emmaus, when their hearts burned within them ; 
in his sermon from the Mount, in his parable of 
the good Samaritan, and in that of the Prodigal 
Son— in every act and word of his life, a grace, a 
mildness, a dignity and love, a patience and 
wisdom worthy of the Son of God. His whole 
life and being were imbued, steeped in this word, 
charity ; it was the spring, the well-head from 
which every thought and feeling gushed into act ; 
and it was this that breathed a mild glory from 
his face in that last agony upon the cross, " when 
the meek Saviour bowed his head and died," 
praying for his enemies. He was the first true 
teacher of morality ; for he alone conceived the 
idea of a pure humanity. He redeemed man 
from the worship of that idol, self, and in- 
structed him by precept and example to love his 
neighbour as himself, to forgive our enemies, to 
do good to those that curse us and despitefully use 
us. He taught the love of good for the sake of 
good, without regard to personal or sinister views, 
and made the affections of the heart the sole seat 
of morality, instead of the pride of the understand- 
ing or the sternness of the will. In answering the 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 21 

question, " who is our neighbour? 1 as one who 
stands in need of our assistance, and whose 
wounds we can bind up, he has done more to 
humanize the thoughts and tame the unruly pas- 
sions, than all who have tried to reform and be- 
nefit mankind. The very idea of abstract bene- 
volence, of the desire to do good because ano- 
ther wants our services, and of regarding the 
human race as one family, the offspring of one 
common parent, is hardly to be found in any- 
other code or system. It was " to the Jews a 
stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness." 
The Greeks and Romans never thought of con- 
sidering others, but as they were Greeks or Ro- 
mans, as they were bound to them by certain 
positive ties, or, on the other hand, as separated 
from them by fiercer antipathies. Their virtues 
were the virtues of political machines, their vices 
were the vices of demons, ready to inflict or to 
endure pain with obdurate and remorseless in- 
flexibility of purpose. But in the Christian re- 
ligion, " we perceive a softness coming over 
the heart of a nation, and the iron scales that 
fence and harden it, melt and drop off." It be- 
comes malleable, capable of pity, of forgiveness, 
of relaxing in its claims, and remitting its 
power. We strike it, and it does not hurt us : 
it is not steel or marble, but flesh and blood, 
clay tempered with tears, and " soft as sinews 



22 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

of the new-born babe." The gospel was first 
preached to the poor, for it consulted their wants 
and interests, not its own pride and arrogance. 
It first promulgated the equality of mankind in 
the community of duties and benefits. It de- 
nounced the iniquities of the chief Priests and 
Pharisees, and declared itself at variance with 
principalities and powers, for it sympathizes not 
with the oppressor, but the oppressed. It first 
abolished slavery, for it did not consider the 
power of the will to inflict injury, as clothing it 
with a right to do so. Its law is good, not 
power. It at the same time tended to wean the 
mind from the grossness of sense, and a particle 
of its divine flame was lent to brighten and pu- 
rify the lamp of love ! 

There have been persons who, being sceptics 
as to the divine mission of Christ, have taken an 
unaccountable prejudice to his doctrines, and 
have been disposed to deny the merit of his cha- 
racter; but this was not the feeling of the great 
men in the age of Elizabeth ( whatever might be 
their belief) one of whom says of him, with a 
boldness equal to its piety : 

" The best of men 
That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufterer ; 
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit ; 
The first true gentleman that ever breathed." 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 23 

This was old honest Deckar, and the lines 
ought to embalm his memory to every one who 
has a sense either of religion, or philosophy, or 
humanity, or true genius. Nor can I help think- 
ing, that we may discern the traces of the in- 
fluence exerted by religious faith in the spirit of 
the poetry of the age of Elizabeth, in the means 
of exciting terror and pity, in the delineation of 
the passions of grief, remorse, love, sympathy, 
the sense of shame, in the fond desires, the 
longings after immortality, in the heaven of hope, 
and the abyss of despair it lays open to us*. 

The literature of this age then, I would say, 
was strongly influenced (among other causes), 
first by the spirit of Christianity, and secondly 
by the spirit of Protestantism. 

The effects of the Reformation on politics and 
philosophy may be seen in the writings and his- 
tory of the next and of the following ages. They 
are still at work, and will continue to be so. 
The effects on the poetry of the time were chiefly 
confined to the moulding of the character, and 
giving a powerful impulse to the intellect of 
the country. The immediate use or application 

* In some Roman Catholic countries, pictures in part sup- 
plied the place of the translation of the Bible : and this dumb 
art arose in the silence of the written oracles. 



24 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

that was made of religion to subjects of imagi- 
nation and fiction was not (from an obvious ground 
of separation ) so direct or frequent, as that which 
was made of the classical and romantic litera- 
ture. 

For much about the same time, the rich and 
fascinating stores of the Greek and Roman my- 
thology, and those of the romantic poetry of Spain 
and Italy, were eagerly explored by the curious, 
and thrown open in translations to the admiring 
gaze of the vulgar. This last circumstance 
could hardly have afforded so much advantage 
to the poets of that day, who were themselves, in 
fact, the translators, as it shews the general cu- 
riosity and increasing interest in such subjects, 
as a prevailing feature of the times. There were 
translations of Tasso by Fairfax, and of Ariosto 
by Harrington, of Homer and Hesiod by Chap- 
man, and of Virgil long before, and Ovid soon 
after ; there was Sir Thomas North's translation 
of Plutarch, of which Shakespear has made such 
admirable use in his Coriolanus and Julius 
Caesar ; and Ben Jonson's tragedies of Catiline 
and Sejanus may themselves be considered as 
almost literal translations into verse, of Tacitus, 
Sallust, and Cicero's Orations in his consulship. 
Boccacio, the divine Boccacio, Petrarch, Dante, 
the satirist Aretine, Machiavel, Castiglione, 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 25 

and others, were familiar to our writers, and 
they make occasional mention of some few French 
authors, as Ronsard and Du Bartas; for the 
French literature had not at this stage arrived at 
its Augustan period, and it was the imitation of 
their literature a century afterwards, when it 
had arrived at its greatest height ( itself copied 
from the Greek and Latin), that enfeebled 
and impoverished our own. But of the time 
that we are considering, it might be said, without 
much extravagance, that every breath that blew, 
that every wave that rolled to our shores, brought 
with it some accession to our knowledge, which 
was engrafted on the national genius. In fact, 
all the disposeable materials that had been ac- 
cumulating for a long period of time, either in 
our own, or in foreign countries, were now 
brought together, and required nothing more 
than to be wrought up, polished, or arranged in 
striking forms, for ornament and use. To this 
every inducement prompted, the novelty of the 
acquisition of knowledge in many cases, the 
emulation of foreign wits, and of immortal works, 
the want and the expectation of such works 
among ourselves, the opportunity and encourage- 
ment afforded for their production by leisure and 
affluence; and, above all, the insatiable desire 
of the mind to beget its own image, and to con- 
struct out of itself, and for the delight and ad- 



26 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

miration of the world and posterity, that excel- 
lence of which the idea exists hitherto only in its 
own breast, and the impression of which it would 
make as universal as the eye of heaven, the 
benefit as common as the air we breathe. The 
first impulse of genius is to create what never 
existed before : the contemplation of that, which 
is so created, is sufficient to satisfy the demands 
of taste ; and it is the habitual study and imita- 
tion of the original models that takes away the 
power, and even wish to do the like. Taste 
limps after genius, and from copying the artificial 
models, we lose sight of the living principle of 
nature. It is the effort we make, and the im- 
pulse we acquire, in overcoming the first ob- 
stacles, that projects us forward ; it is the ne- 
cessity for exertion that makes us conscious of 
our strength ; but this necessity and this impulse 
once removed, the tide of fancy and enthusiasm, 
which is at first a running stream, soon settles 
and crusts into the standing pool of dulness, 
criticism, and virtu. 

What also gave an unusual impetus to the 
mind of man at this period, was the discovery of 
the New World, and the reading of voyages and 
travels. Green islands and golden sands seemed 
to arise, as by enchantment, out of the bosom of 
the watery waste, and invite the cupidity, or wing 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 27 

the imagination of the dreaming speculator. Fairy 
land was realized in new and unknown worlds. 
" Fortunate fields and groves and flowery vales, 
thrice happy isles/' were found floating " like 
those Hesperian gardens famed cf old/' beyond 
Atlantic seas, as dropt from the zenith. The 
people, the soil, the clime, every thing gave un- 
limited scope to the curiosity of the traveller and 
reader. Other manners might be said to en- 
large the bounds of knowledge, and new mines 
of wealth were tumbled at our feet. It is from 
a voyage to the Straits of Magellan that Shake- 
spear has taken the hint of Prospero's Enchanted 
Island, and of the savage Caliban with his 
god Setebos*. Spenser seems to have had the 
same feeling in his mind in the production of his 
Faery Queen, and vindicates his poetic fiction 
on this very ground of analogy. 

" Right well I wore, most mighty sovereign, 
That all this famous antique history 
Of some the abundance of an idle brain 
Will judged be, and painted forgery, 
Rather than matter of just memory: 
Since none that breatheth living air, doth know 
Where is that happy land of faery 
Which I so much do vaunt, but no where show, 
But vouch antiquities, which nobody can know. 

* See a Voyage to the Straits of Magellan, 1594. 



28 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

But let that man with better sense avise, 
That of the world least part to us is read : 
And daily how through hardy enterprize 
Many great regions are discovered, 
Which to late age were never mentioned. 
Who ever heard of th' Indian Peru 1 
Or who in venturous vessel measured 
The Amazons' huge river, now found true? 
Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view 1 

Yet all these were when no man did them know, 
Yet have from wisest ages hidden been : 
And later times things more unknown shall show. 
Why then should witless man so much misween 
That nothing is but that which he hath seen l 
What if within the moon's fair shining sphere, 
What if in every other star unseen, 
Of other worlds he happily should hear, 
He wonder would much more ; yet such to some appear." 

Fancy's air-drawn pictures after history's wak- 
ing dream shewed like clouds over mountains ; 
and from the romance of real life to the idlest 
fiction, the transition seemed easy. — Shakespear, 
as well as others of his time, availed him- 
self of the old Chronicles, and of the traditions 
or fabulous inventions contained in them in such 
ample measure, and which had not yet been ap- 
propriated to the purposes of poetry or the drama. 
The stage was a new thing ; and those who had 
to supply its demands laid their hands upon 
whatever came within their reach : they were not 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 29 

particular as to the means, so that they gained 
the end. Lear is founded upon an old ballad ; 
Othello on an Italian novel; Hamlet on a Danish, 
and Macbeth on a Scotch tradition : one of which 
is to be found in Saxo-Grammaticus, and the last in 
Hollingshed. The Ghost-scenes and the Witches 
in each, are authenticated in the old Gothic 
history. There was also this connecting link 
between the poetry of this age and the super- 
natural traditions of a former one, that the belief 
in them was still extant, and in full force and 
visible operation among the vulgar ( to say no 
more) in the time of our authors. The ap- 
palling and wild chimeras of superstition and 
ignorance, " those bodiless creations that ecstacy 
is very cunning in," were inwoven with existing 
manners and opinions, and all their effects on 
the passions of terror or pity might be gathered 
from common and actual observation — might be 
discerned in the workings of the face, the expres- 
sions of the tongue, the writhings of a troubled 
conscience. " Your face, my Thane, is as a book 
where men may read strange matters." Midnight 
and secret murders too, from the imperfect state 
of the police, were more common ; and the fe- 
rocious and brutal manners that would stamp the 
brow of the hardened ruffian or hired assassin, 
more incorrigible and undisguised. The por- 
traits of Tyrrel and Forrest were, no doubt, done 



30 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

from the lite. We find that the ravages of the 
plague, the destructive rage of fire, the poisoned 
chalice, lean famine, the serpent's mortal sting, 
and the fury of wild beasts, were the common 
topics of their poetry, as they were common oc- 
currences in more remote periods of history. 
They were the strong ingredients thrown into 
the cauldron of tragedy, to make it " thick and 
slab." Man's life was (as it appears to me) 
more full of traps and pit-falls ; of hair-breadth 
accidents by flood and field ; more way-laid by 
sudden and startling evils ; it trod on the brink of 
hope and fear; stumbled upon fate unawares; 
while the imagination, close behind it, caught at 
and clung to the shape of danger, .or " snatched a 
wild and fearful joy" from its escape. The acci- 
dents of nature were less provided against ; the 
excesses of the passions and of lawless power 
were less regulated, and produced more strange 
and desperate catastrophes. The tales of Boc- 
cacio are founded on the great pestilence of 
Florence, Fletcher the poet died of the plague, 
and Mario w was stabbed in a tavern quarrel. 
The strict authority of parents, the inequality of 
ranks, or the hereditary feuds between different 
families, made more unhappy loves or matches. 

" The course of true love never did run even," 

Again, the heroic and martial spirit which 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 31 

breathes in our elder writers, was yet in con- 
siderable activity in the reign of Elizabeth. 
" The age of chivalry was not then quite 
gone, nor the glory of Europe extinguished for 
ever." Jousts and tournaments were still com- 
mon with the nobility in England and in fo- 
reign countries : Sir Philip Sidney was particu- 
larly distinguished for his proficiency in these 
exercises ( and indeed fell a martyr to his am- 
bition as a soldier) — and the gentle Surrey was 
still more famous, on the same account, just 
before him. It is true, the general use of fire- 
arms gradually superseded the necessity of skill 
in the sword, or bravery in the person : and as a 
symptom of the rapid degeneracy in this respect, 
we find Sir John Suckling- soon after boasting- of 
himself as one — 

" Who prized black eyes, and a lucky hit 
At bowls, above all the trophies of wit/ 1 

It was comparatively an age of peace, 
" Like strength reposing on his own right arm ;" 

but the sound of civil combat might still be 
heard in the distance, the spear glittered to the 
eye of memory, or the clashing of armour struck 
on the imagination of the ardent and the young. 
They were borderers on the savage state, on the 
times of war and bigotry, though in the lap of 



32 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

arts, of luxury, and knowledge. They stood on 
the shore and saw the billows rolling after the 
storm : " they heard the tumult, and were still." 
The manners and out-of-door amusements were 
more tinctured with a spirit of adventure and 
romance. The war with wild beasts, &c. was 
more strenuously kept up in country sports. I do 
not think we could get from sedentary poets, 
who had never mingled in the vicissitudes, the 
dangers, or excitements of the chase, such de- 
scriptions of hunting and other athletic games, 
as are to be found in Shakespear's Midsummer 
Night's Dream, or Fletcher's Noble Kinsmen. 

With respect to the good cheer and hospitable 
living of those times, I cannot agree with an in- 
genious and agreeable writer of the present day, 
that it was general or frequent. The very stress 
laid upon certain holidays and festivals, shews 
that they did not keep up the same Saturnalian 
licence and open house all the year round. 
They reserved themselves for great occasions, 
and made the best amends they could, for a year 
of abstinence and toil by a week of merriment 
and convivial indulgence. Persons in middle 
life at this day, who can afford a good dinner 
every day, do not look forward to it as any parti- 
cular subject of exultation : the poor peasant, 
who can only contrive to treat himself to a joint 
of meat on a Sunday, considers it as an event 



OENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 53 

in the week. So, in the old Cambridge comedy 
of the Returne from Parnassus, we find this in- 
dignant description of the progress of luxury in 
those days, put into the mouth of one of the 
speakers. 

" Why is't not strange to see a ragged clerke, 
Some stammell weaver, or some butcher's sonne, 
That scrubb'd a late within a sleeveless gowne, 
When the commencement, like a morrice dance, 
Hath put a bell or two about his legges, 
Created him a sweet cleane gentleman : 
How then he gins to follow fashions. 
He whose thin sire dwelt in a smokye roofe, 
Must take tobacco, and must wear a locke. 
His thirsty dad drinkes in a wooden bowle, 
But his sweet self is served in silver plate. 
His hungry sire will scrape you twenty legges 
For one good Christmas meal on new year's day, 
But his mawe must be capon cramm'd each day/' 

Act III. Scene 2. 

This does not look as if in those days " it 
snowed of meat and drink," as a matter of course 
throughout the year !— The distinctions of dress, 
the badges of different professions, the very signs 
of the shops, which we have set aside for written 
inscriptions over the doors, were, as Mr. Lamb 
observes, a sort of visible language to the ima- 
gination, and hints for thought. Like the cos- 
tume of different foreign nations, they had an 
immediate striking and picturesque effect, giving 

D 



34 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

scope to the fancy. The surface of society was 
embossed with hieroglyphics, and poetry existed 
" in act and complement extern." The poetry 
of former times might be directly taken from 
real life, as our poetry is taken from the poetry 
of former times. Finally, the face of nature, 
which was the same glorious object then that it 
is now, was open to them ; and coming first, they 
gathered her fairest flowers to live for ever in 
their verse : — the movements of the human heart 
were not hid from them, for they had the same 
passions as we, only less disguised, and less sub- 
ject to controul. Deckar has given an admirable 
description of a mad-house in one of his plays. 
But it might be perhaps objected, that it was 
only a literal account taken from Bedlam at that 
time : and it might be answered, that the old 
poets took the same method of describing the 
passions and fancies of men whom they met at 
large, which forms the point of communion be- 
tween us : for the title of the old play, u A Mad 
World, my Masters," is hardly yet obsolete ; and 
we are pretty much the same Bedlam still, per- 
haps a little better managed, like the real one, 
and with more care and humanity shewn to the 
patients ! 

Lastly, to conclude this account ; what gave 
a unity and common direction to all these causes, 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 35 

was the natural genius of the country, which 
was strong in these writers in proportion to their 
strength, We are a nation of islanders, and we 
cannot help it; nor mend ourselves if we would. 
We are something in ourselves, nothing when 
we try to ape others. Music and painting are 
not our forte : for what we have done in that way 
has been little, and that borrowed from others 
with great difficulty. But we may boast of our 
poets and philosophers. That's something. We 
have had strong heads and sound hearts among 
us. Thrown on one side of the world, and left 
to bustle for ourselves, we have fought out many 
a battle for truth and freedom. That is our na- 
tural style ; and it were to be wished we had in 
no instance departed from it. Our situation has 
given us a certain cast of thought and character; 
and our liberty has enabled us to make the most 
of it. We are of a stiff clay, not moulded into 
every fashion, with stubborn joints not easily 
bent. We are slow to think, and therefore im- 
pressions do not work upon us till they act in 
masses. We are not forward to express our 
feelings, and therefore they do not come from 
us till they force their way in the most impetu- 
ous eloquence. Our language is, as it were, to 
begin anew, and we make use of the most singu- 
lar and boldest combinations to explain ourselves. 
Our wit comes from us, " like birdlime, brains 

d2 



36 GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

and all." We pay too little attention to [form and 
method, leave our works in an unfinished state, 
but still the materials we work in are solid and 
of nature's mint ; we do not deal in counterfeits. 
We both under and over-do, but we keep an eye 
to the prominent features, the main chance. We 
are more for weight than show ; care only about 
what interests ourselves, instead of trying to im- 
pose upon others by plausible appearances, and 
are obstinate and intractable in not conforming 
to common rules, by which many arrive at their 
ends with half the real waste of thought and 
trouble. We neglect all but the principal ob- 
ject, gather our force to make a great blow, 
bring it down, and relapse into sluggishness 
and indifference again. Materiam superabat 
opus, cannot be said of us. We may be accused 
of grossness, but not of flimsiness; of extrava- 
gance, but not of affectation; of want of art and 
refinement, but not of a want of truth and na- 
ture. Our literature, in a word, is Gothic and 
grotesque ; unequal and irregular ; not cast in a 
previous mould, nor of one uniform texture, but 
of great weight in the whole, and of incomparable 
value in the best parts. It aims at an excess of 
beauty or power, hits or misses, and is either 
very good indeed, or absolutely good for nothing. 
This character applies in particular to our litera- 
ture in the age of Elizabeth, which is its best 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 37 

period, before the introduction of a rage for 
French rules and French models; for what- 
ever may be the value of our own original style 
of composition, there can be neither offence nor 
presumption in saying, that it is at least better 
than our second-hand imitations of others. Our 
understanding (such as it is, and must remain 
to be good for any thing) is not a thorough- 
fare for common places, smooth as the palm of 
one's hand, but full of knotty points and jutting 
excrescences, rough, uneven, overgrown with 
brambles ; and I like this aspect of the mind 
(as some one said of the country), where nature 
keeps a good deal of the soil in her own hands. 
Perhaps the genius of our poetry has more of 
Pan than of Apollo ; " but Pan is a God, Apollo 
is no more !" 



LECTURE II. 



ON THE DRAMATIC WRITERS CONTEMPORARY 
WITH SHAKESPEAR, LYLY, MARLOW, HEYWOOD, 
MIDDLETON, AND ROWLEY. 

The period of which I shall have to treat 
(from the Reformation to the middle of Charles I.) 
was prolific in dramatic excel lence 5 even more 
than in any other. In approaching it, we seem 
to be approaching the rich strond described 
in Spenser, where treasures of all kinds lay 
scattered, or rather crowded together on the 
shore in inexhaustible but unregarded profu- 
sion, " rich as the oozy bottom of the deep 
in sunken wrack and sumless treasuries." We 
are confounded with the variety, and dazzled 
with the dusky splendour of names sacred in their 
obscurity, and works gorgeous in their decay, 
" majestic, though in ruin," like Guyon when 
he entered the Cave of Mammon, and was 
shewn the massy pillars and huge unwieldy 
fragments of gold, covered with- dust and cob- 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 39 

webs, and " shedding a faint shadow of uncer- 
tain light, 

" Such as a lamp whose light doth fade away, 
Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night 
Doth shew to him that walks in fear and sad affright." 

The dramatic literature of this period only 
wants exploring, to fill the enquiring mind with 
wonder and delight, and to convince us that we 
have been wrong in lavishing all our praise on 
u new-born gauds, though they are made and 
moulded of things past ;" and in " giving to 
dust, that is a little gilded, more laud than gilt 
o'er-dusted." In short, the discovery of such 
an unsuspected and forgotten mine of wealth 
will be found amply to repay the labour of the 
search, and it will be hard, if in most cases 
curiosity does not end in admiration, and mo- 
desty teach us wisdom. A few of the most sin- 
gular productions of these times remain un- 
claimed ; of others the authors are uncertain ; 
many of them are joint-productions of different 
pens ; but of the best the writers' names are in 
general known, and obviously stamped on the 
productions themselves. The names of Ben Jon- 
son, for instance, Massinger, Beaumont and 
Fletcher, are almost, though not quite, as fa- 
miliar to us, as that of Shakespear ; and their 
works still keep regular possession of the stage. 



40 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

Another set of writers included in the same ge- 
neral period (the end of the sixteenth and the 
beginning of the seventeenth century), who are 
next, or equal, or sometimes superior to these in 
power, but whose names are now little known, 
and their writings nearly obsolete, are Lyly, 
Mario w, Marston, Chapman, Middleton, and 
Rowley, Heywood, Webster, Deckar, and Ford. 
I shall devote the present and two following 
Lectures to the best account I can give of these, 
and shall begin with some of the least known. 

The earliest tragedy of which I shall take no- 
tice (I believe the earliest that we have) is that 
of Ferrex and Porrex, or Gorboduc (as it has 
been generally called), the production of Thomas 
Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards created 
Earl of Dorset, assisted by one Thomas Norton. 
This was first acted with applause before the 
Queen in 1561, the noble author being then 
quite a young man. This tragedy being consi- 
dered as the first in our language, is certainly a 
curiosity, and in other respects it is also remark- 
able ; though, perhaps, enough has been said 
about it. As a work of genius, it may be set 
down as nothing, for it contains hardly a memo- 
rable line or passage ; as a work of art, and the 
first of its kind attempted in the language, it may 
be considered as a monument of the taste and 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 41 

skill of the authors. Its merit is confined to the 
regularity of the plot and metre, to its general 
good sense, and strict attention to common de- 
corum. If the poet has not stamped the pecu- 
liar genius of his age upon this first attempt, it 
is no inconsiderable proof of strength of mind 
and conception sustained by its own sense of pro- 
priety alone, to have so far anticipated the taste 
of succeeding times, as to have avoided any 
glaring offence against rules and models, which 
had no existence in his day. Or perhaps a truer 
solution might be, that there were as yet no ex- 
amples of a more ambiguous and irregular kind to 
tempt him to err, and as he had not the impulse or 
resources within himself to strike out a new path, 
he merely adhered with modesty and caution to 
the classical models with which, as a scholar, 
he was well acquainted. The language of the 
dialogue is clear, unaffected, and intelligible 
without the smallest difficulty, even to this day ; 
it has " no figures nor no fantasies," to which the 
most fastidious critic can object, but the dramatic 
power is nearly none at all. It is written ex- 
pressly to set forth the dangers and mischiefs 
that arise from the division of sovereign power ; 
and the several speakers dilate upon the different 
views of the subject in turn, like clever school- 
boys set to compose a thesis, or declaim upon the 
fatal consequences of ambition, and the uncer- 



42 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

tainty of human affairs. The author, in the end, 
declares for the doctrine of passive obedience and 
non-resistance ; a doctrine which indeed was 
seldom questioned at that time of day. Eubulus, 
one of the old king's counsellors, thus gives his 
opinion — 

" Eke fully with the duke my mind agrees, 
That no cause serves, whereby the subject may 
Call to account the doings of his prince ; 
Much less in blood by sword to work revenge : 
No more than may the hand cut off the head. 
In act nor speech, no nor in secret thought, 
The subject may rebel against his lord, 
Or judge of him that sits in Caesar's seat, 
With grudging mind to damn those he mislikes . 
Though kings forget to govern as they ought, 
Yet subjects must obey as they are bound." 

Yet how little he was borne out in this in- 
ference by the unbiassed dictates of his own 
mind, may appear from the freedom and un- 
guarded boldness of such lines as the following, 
addressed by a favourite to a prince, as courtly 
advice, 

" Know ye that lust of kingdoms hath no law : 
The Gods do bear and well allow in kings 
The things that they abhor in rascal routs. 
When kings on slender quarrels run to wars, 
And then in cruel and unkindly wise 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 43 

Command thefts, rapes, murder of innocents, 
The spoil of towns, ruins of mighty realms ; 
Think you such princes do suppose themselves 
Subject to laws of kind and fear of Gods? 
Murders and violent thefts in private men 
Are heinous crimes, and full of foul reproach ; 
Yet none offence, but deck'd with noble name 
Of glorious conquests in the hands of kings." 

The principal characters make as many invo- 
cations to the names of their children, their conn- 
try, and their friends, as Cicero in his Orations, 
and all the topics insisted upon are open, direct, 
urged in the face of day, with no more attention 
to time or place, to an enemy who overhears, or 
an accomplice to whom they are addressed ; in a 
word, with no more dramatic insinuation or 
bye-play than the pleadings in a court of law. 
Almost the only passage that I can instance, as 
rising above this didactic tone of mediocrity into 
the pathos of poetry, is one where Marcella la- 
ments the untimely death of her lover, Ferrex. 

" Ah ! noble prince, how oft have I beheld 

Thee mounted on thy fierce and trampling steed, 
Shining in armour bright before the tilt ; 
And with thy mistress' sleeve tied on thy helm, 
And charge thy staff to please thy lady's eye, 
That bowed the head-piece of thy friendly foe ! 
How oft in arms on horse to bend the mace, 
How oft in arms on foot to break the sword, 
Which never now these eyes may see again I" 



44 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

There seems a reference to Chaucer in the 
wording of the following lines — 

" Then saw I how he smiled with slaying knife 
Wrapp'd under cloke, then saw I deep deceit 
Lurk in his face, and death prepared for me*." 

Sir Philip Sidney says of this tragedy: " Gor- 
boduc is full of stately speeches, and well sound- 
ing phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his 
style, and as full of notable morality ; which it 
doth most delightfully teach, and thereby obtain 
the very end of poetry." And Mr. Pope, whose 
taste in such matters was very different from Sir 
Philip Sidney's, says in still stronger terms : 
" That the writers of the succeeding age might 
have improved as much in other respects, by 
copying from him a propriety in the sentiments, 
an unaffected perspicuity of style, and an easy 
How in the numbers. In a word, that chastity, 
correctness, and gravity of style, which are so 
essential to tragedy, and which all the tragic 
poets who followed, not excepting Shakespear 
himself, either little understood, or perpetually 
neglected." It was well for us and them that 
they did so ! 

The Induction to the Mirrour for Magistrates 

* " The smiler with the knife under his cloke." 

Knight's Tale. 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 45 

does his Muse more credit. It sometimes re- 
minds one of Chaucer, and at others seems like 
an anticipation, in some degree, both of the 
measure and manner of Spenser. The following 
stanzas may give the reader an idea of the merit 
of this old poem, which was published in 1563. 

" By him lay heauie Sleepe cosin of Death 
Flat on the ground, and still as any stone, 
A very corps, saue yeelding forth a breath. 
Small keepe tooke he whom Fortune frowned on, 
Or whom she lifted vp into the throne 
Of high renowne, but as a liuing death, 
So dead aliue, of life he drew the breath. 

The bodies rest, the quiet of the hart, 
The trauailes ease, the still nights feere was he. 
And of our life in earth the better part, 
Reuer of sight, and yet in whom we see 
Things oft that tide, and oft that neuer bee. 
Without respect esteeming equally 
King Croesus pompe, and Irus pouertie. 

And next in order sad Old Age we found, 
His beard all hoare, his eyes hollow and blind, 
With drouping cheere still poring on the ground, 
As on the place where nature him assign'd 
To rest, when that the sisters had vntwin'd 
His vitall thred, and ended with their knife 
The fleeting course of fast declining life. 

There heard we him with broke and hollow plaint 
Rew with himselfe his end approching fast, 
And all for nought his wretched mind torment, 



46 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

With sweete remembrance of his pleasures past, 
And fresh delites of lustic youth forewast. 

Recounting which, how would he sob and shreek 1 
And to be yong againe of Ioue beseeke. 

But and the cruell fates so fixed be, 

That time forepast cannot returne againe, 

This one request of Ioue yet prayed he : 

That in such withred plight, and wretched paine, 

As eld (accompanied with lothsome traine) 

Had brought on him, all were it woe and griefe, 
He might a while yet linger forth his life, 

And not so soone descend into the pit : 
Where Death, when he the mortall corps hath slaine, 
With wretchlesse hand in graue doth couer it, 
Thereafter neuer to enioy againe 
The gladsome light, but in the ground ylaine, 
In depth of darknesse waste and weare to nought, 
As he had nere into the world been brought. 

But who had seene him, sobbing how he stood 
Vnto himselfe, and how he would bemone 
His youth forepast, as though it wrought him good 
To talke of youth, all were his youth foregone, 
He would haue musde and maruail'd much whereon 
This wretched Age should life desire so faine, 
And knowes ful wel life doth but length his paine. 

Crookebackt he was, toothshaken, and blere eyde, 
Went on three feete, and sometime crept on foure, 
With old lame bones, that ratled by his side, 
His scalpe all pil'd, and he with eld forelore : 
His withred fist still knocking at Deaths dore, 
Fumbling and driueling as he drawes his breath, 
For briefe, the shape and messenger of Death." 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 47 

John Lyly ( born in the Weold of Kent about 
the year 1553), was the author of Midas and 
Endymion, of Alexander and Campaspe, and of 
the comedy of Mother Bombie. Of the last it 
may be said, that it is very much what its name 
would import, old, quaint, and vulgar. — I may 
here observe, once for all, that I would not be 
understood to say, that the age of Elizabeth was 
all of gold without any alloy. There was both 
gold and lead in it, and often in one and the 
same writer. In our impatience to form an 
opinion, we conclude, when we first meet with 
a good thing, that it is owing to the age ; or, if 
we meet with a bad one, it is characteristic of 
the age, when, in fact, it is neither ; for there are 
good and bad in almost all ages, and one age 
excels in one thing, another in another: — only 
one age may excel more and in higher things 
than another, but none can excel equally and 
completely in all. The writers of Elizabeth, as 
poets, soared to the height they did, by indulging 
their own unrestrained enthusiasm : as comic 
writers, they chiefly copied the manners of the 
age, which did not give them the same advan- 
tages over their successors. Lyly's comedy, for 
instance, is " poor, unfledged, has never winged 
from view o'th' nest," and tries in vain to rise 
above the ground with crude conceits and clumsy 
levity. Lydia, the heroine of the piece, is silly 



4S ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

enough, if the rest were but as witty. But the 
author has shewn no partiality in the distribution 
of his gifts. To say truth, it was a very common 
fault of the old comedy, that its humours were 
too low, and the weaknesses exposed too great to 
be credible, or an object of ridicule, even if they 
were. The affectation of their courtiers is pas- 
sable, and diverting as a contrast to present 
manners ; but the eccentricities of their clowns 
are " very tolerable, and not to be endured." 
Any kind of activity of mind might seem to the 
writers better than none : any nonsense served 
to amuse their hearers ; any cant phrase, any 
coarse allusion, any pompous absurdity, was 
taken for wit and drollery. Nothing could be 
too mean, too foolish, too improbable, or too 
offensive, to be a proper subject for laughter. 
Any one (looking hastily at this side of the 
question only) might be tempted to suppose the 
youngest children of Thespis a very callow brood, 
chirping their slender notes, or silly swains 
" grating their lean and flashy jests on scrannel 
pipes of wretched straw." The genius of comedy 
looked too often like a lean and hectic panta- 
loon; love was a slip-shod shepherdess ; wit a 
parti-coloured fool like Harlequin, and the plot 
came hobbling, like a clown, after all. A string 
of impertinent and farcical jests (or rather blun- 
ders), was with great formality ushered into 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 49 

the world as (c a right pleasant, and conceited 
comedy." Comedy could not descend lower than 
it sometimes did, without glancing at physical 
imperfections and deformity. The two young 
persons in the play before us, on whom the event 
of the plot chiefly hinges, do in fact turn out to 
be no better than changelings and natural idiots. 
This is carrying innocence and simplicity too 
far. So again, the character of Sir Tophas in 
Endymion, an affected, blustering, talkative, 
cowardly pretender, treads too near upon blank 
stupidity and downright want of common sense, 
to be admissible as a butt for satire. Shakespear 
has contrived to clothe the lamentable nakedness 
of the same sort of character with a motley garb 
from the wardrobe of his imagination, and has 
redeemed it from insipidity by a certain plausi- 
bility of speech, and playful extravagance of 
humour. But the undertaking was nearly des- 
perate. Ben Jonson tried to overcome the diffi- 
culty by the force of learning and study; and 
thought to gain his end by persisting in error; 
but he only made matters worse ; for his clowns 
and coxcombs (if we except Bobadil), are the 
most incorrigible and insufferable of all others. 
— The story of Mother Bombie is little else than 
a tissue of absurd mistakes, arising from the 
confusion of the different characters one with 
another, like another Comedy of Errors, and ends 



50 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

in their being (most of them), married in a game 
at cross-purposes to the persons they particularly 
dislike. 

To leave this, and proceed to something plea- 
santer, Midas and Endymion, which are worthy 
of their names and of the subject. The story in 
both is classical, and the execution is for the 
most part elegant and simple. There is often 
something that reminds one of the graceful com- 
municativeness of Lucian or of Apuleius, from 
whom one of the stories is borrowed. Lyly 
made a more attractive picture of Grecian man- 
ners at second-hand, than of English characters 
from his own observation. The poet (which is 
the great merit of a poet in such a subject) has 
transported himself to the scene of action, to 
ancient Greece or Asia Minor; the manners, the 
images, the traditions are preserved with truth 
and delicacy, and the dialogue (to my fancy) 
glides and sparkles like a clear stream from the 
Muses' spring. I know few things more perfect 
in characteristic painting, than the exclamation 
of the Phrygian shepherds, who, afraid of be- 
traying the secret of Midas's ears, fancy that 
" the very reeds bow down, as though they 
listened to their talk ;" nor more affecting in sen- 
timent, than the apostrophe addressed by his 
friend Eumenides to Endymion, on waking from 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 51 

his long sleep, " Behold the twig to which thou 
laidest down thy head, is now become a tree." 
The narrative is sometimes a little wandering and 
desultory ; but if it had been ten times as tedious, 
this thought would have redeemed it ; for I can- 
not conceive of anv thing: more beautiful, more 
simple or touching, than this exquisitely chosen 
image and dumb proof of the manner in which he 
had passed his life, from youth to old age, in a 
dream, a dream of love. Happy Endymion! 
Faithful Eumenides! Divine Cynthia! Who 
would not wish to pass his life in such a sleep, 
a long, long sleep, dreaming of some fair hea- 
venly Goddess, with the moon shining upon his 
face, and the trees growing silently over his 
head! — There is something in this story which 
has taken a strange hold of my fancy, perhaps 
" out of my weakness and my melancholy;" but 
for the satisfaction of the reader, I will quote the 
whole passage : " it is silly sooth, and dallies 
with the innocence of love, like the old age." 

" Cynthia, Well, let us to Endymion. I will not be so 
stately (good Endymion) not to stoop to do thee good ; and if 
thy liberty consist in a kiss from me, thou shalt have it. 
And although my mouth hath been heretofore as untouched 
as my thoughts, yet now to recover thy life (though to restore 
thy youth it be impossible) I will do that to Endymion, which 
yet never mortal man could boast of heretofore, nor shall ever 
hope for hereafter. ( She kisses him). 

Eumenides. Madam, he beginneth to stir. 
E2 



52 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

Cynthia. Soft, Eumenides, stand still. 
Eumenides. Ah ! I see his eyes almost open. 
Cynthia. I command thee once again, stir not: I will 
stand behind him. 

Panelion. What do I see ? Endymion almost awake ? 
Eumenides. Endymion, Endymion, art thou deaf or dumb? 
Or hath this long sleep taken away thy memory ? Ah ! my 
sweet Endymion, seest thou not Eumenides, thy faithful 
friend, thy faithful Eumenides, who for thy sake hath been 
careless of his own content ? Speak, Endymion ! Endymion ! 
Endymion ! 

Endymion. Endymion ! I call to mind such a name. 
Eumenides. Hast thou forgotten thyself, Endymion ? Then 
do I not marvel thou rememberest not thy friend. I tell 
thee thou art Endymion, and I Eumenides. Behold also 
Cynthia, by whose favour thou art awaked, and by whose 
virtue thou shalt continue thy natural course. 

Cynthia. Endymion ! Speak, sweet Endymion ! Knowest 
thou not Cynthia? 

Endymion. Oh, heavens ! whom do I behold ? Fair Cyn- 
thia, divine Cynthia ? 

Cynthia. I am Cynthia, and thou Endymion. 
Endymion. Endymion! What do I hear? What! a grey 
beard, hollow eyes, withered body, and decayed limbs, and 
all in one night ? 

Eumenides. One night ! Thou hast slept here forty years, 
by what enchantress, as yet it is not knowu : and behold the 
twig to which thou laidest thy head, is now become a tree. 
Callest thou not Eumenides to remembrance? 

Endymion. Thy name I do remember by the sound, 
but thy favour I do not yet call to mind : only divine 
Cynthia, to whom time, fortune, death, and destiny are sub- 
ject, I see and remember ; and in all humility, I regard and 
reverence. 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 53 

Cynthia. You shall have good cause to remember Eume- 
nides, who hath for thy safety forsaken his own solace. 

Endymion. Am I that Endymion, who was wont in court 
to lead my life, and in justs, tourneys, aud arms, to exercise 
my youth? Am I that Endymion? 

Eumenides. Thou art that Endymion, and I Eumenides : 
wilt thou not yet call me to remembrance? 

Endymion. Ah! sweet Eumenides, I now perceive thou 
art he, and that myself have the name of Endymion; but 
that this should be my body, I doubt : for how could my 
curled locks be turned to gray hair, and my strong body to 
a dying weakness, having waxed old, and not knowing it? 

Cynthia. Well, Endymion, arise : awhile sit down, for that 
thy limbs are stiff and not able to stay thee, and tell what 
thou hast seen in thy sleep all this while. What dreams, 
visions, thoughts, and fortunes: for it is impossible but in 
so long time, thou shouldst see strange things." 

Act V. Scene 1. 

It does not take away from the pathos of this 
poetical allegory on the chances of love and the 
progress of human life, that it may be supposed 
to glance indirectly at the conduct of Queen Eli- 
zabeth to our author, who, after fourteen years' 
expectation of the place of Master of the Revels, 
was at last disappointed. This princess took no 
small delight in keeping her poets in a sort of 
Fool's Paradise. The wit of Lyly, in parts of 
this romantic drama, seems to have grown spi- 
rited and classical with his subject. He puts 
this fine hyperbolical irony in praise of Dipsas, 



54 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

(a most unamiable personage, as it will appear), 
into the mouth of Sir Tophas : 

" Oh what fine thin hair hath Dipsas ! What a pretty low 
forehead ! What a tall and stately nose ! What little hollow 
eyes I What great and goodly lips ! How harmless she is, being 
toothless ! Her fingers fat and short, adorned with long hails 
like a bittern ! What a low stature she is, and yet what a 
great foot she carrieth ! How thrifty must she be, in whom 
there is no waist; how virtuous she is like to be, over whom 
no man can be jealous V* Act III, Scene 3. 

It is singular that the style of this author, 
which is extremely sweet and flowing, should 
have been the butt of ridicule to his contempo- 
raries, particularly Drayton, who compliments 
Sidney as the author that 

" Did first reduce 
Our tongue from Lyly's writing, then in use; 
Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies, 
Playing with words and idle similes, 
As the English apes and very zanies be 
Of every thing that they do hear and see." 

Which must apply to the prose style of his work, 
called " Euphues and his England," and is much 
more like Sir Philip Sidney's own manner, than 
the dramatic style of our poet. Besides the pas- 
sages above quoted, I might refer to the open- 
ing speeches of Midas, and again to the admi- 



HEYWOOD, M1DDLETON, &c. 55 

rable contention between Pan and Apollo for 
the palm of music. — His Alexander and Cam- 
paspe is another sufficient answer to the charge. 
This play is a very pleasing transcript of old man- 
ners and sentiment. It is full of sweetness and 
point, of Attic salt and the honey of Hymettus. 
The following song given to Apelles, would 
not disgrace the mouth of the prince of pain- 
ters: 

" Cupid and my Campaspe play'd 
At cards for kisses, Cupid paid ; 
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows ; 
His mother's doves, and team of sparrows ; 
Loses them too, then down he throws 
The coral of his lip, the rose 
Growing on's cheek (but none knows how) 
With these the chrystal of his brow, 
And then the dimple of his chin ; 
All these did my Campaspe win. 
At last he set her both his eyes, 
She won, and Cupid blind did rise. 
O, Love ! has she done this to thee ? 
What shall, alas ! become of me V 

The conclusion of this drama is as follows. 
Alexander addressing himself to Apelles, says, 

" Well, enjoy one another: I give her thee frankly, 
Apelles. Thou shalt see that Alexander maketh but a toy of 
love, and leadeth affection in fetters : using fancy as a fool to 
make him sport, or a minstrel to make him merry. It is not 



56 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

the amorous glance of an eye can settle an idle thought in the 
heart : no, no, it is children's game, a life for sempsters and 
scholars; the one, pricking in clouts, have nothing else to 
think on ; the other, picking fancies out of books, have little 
else to marvel at. Go, Apelles, take with you your Cam- 
paspe ; Alexander is cloyed with looking on that, which thou 
wonderest at. 

Apelles. Thanks to your Majesty on bended knee; you 
have honoured Appelles. 

Campaspe. Thanks with bowed heart ; you have blest Cam- 
paspe. [Exeunt, 

Alexander. Page, go warn Clytus and Parmenio, and the 
other lords, to be in readiness ; let the trumpet sound, strike 
up the drum, and I will presently into Persia. How now, 
Hephestion, is Alexander able to resist love as he list? 

Hephestion. The conquering of Thebes was not so honour- 
able as the subduing of these thoughts. 

Alexander. It were a shame Alexander should desire to 
command the world, if he could not command himself. But 
come, let us go. And, good Hephestion, when all the world 
is won, and every country is thine and mine, either mid me 
out another to subdue, or on my word, I will fall in love." 

Marlowe is a name that stands high, and al- 
most first in this list of dramatic worthies. He 
was a little before Shakespear's time*, and has 
a marked character both from him and the rest. 
There is a lust of power in his writings, a hunger 
and thirst after unrighteousness, a glow of the 
imagination, unhallowed by any thing but its 
own energies. His thoughts burn within him 

* He died about 1694. 



HEYVVOOD, MIDDLETON, &c 57 

like a furnace with bickering flames ; or throw- 
ing out black smoke and mists, that hide the 
dawn of genius, or like a poisonous mineral, 
corrode the heart. His Life and Death of Doc- 
tor Faustus, though an imperfect and unequal 
performance, is his greatest work. Faustus him- 
self is a rude sketch, but it is a gigantic one. 
This character may be considered as a personi- 
fication of the pride of will and eagerness of 
curiosity, sublimed beyond the reach of fear and 
remorse. He is hurried away, and, as it were, 
devoured by a tormenting desire to enlarge his 
knowledge to the utmost bounds of nature and 
art, and to extend his power with his knowledge. 
He would realise all the fictions of a lawless 
imagination, would solve the most subtle specu- 
lations of abstract reason ; and for this purpose, 
sets at defiance all mortal consequences, and 
leagues himself with demoniacal power, with 
" fate and metaphysical aid." The idea of 
witchcraft and necromancy, once the dread of 
the vulgar and the darling of the visionary re- 
cluse, seems to have had its origin in the rest- 
less tendency of the human mind, to conceive of 
and aspire to more than it can atchieve by na- 
tural means, and in the obscure apprehension 
that the gratification of this extravagant and un- 
authorised desire, can only be attained by the 



58 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

sacrifice of all our ordinary hopes, and better pros- 
pects to the infernal agents that lend themselves 
to its accomplishment. Such is the founda- 
tion of the present story. Faustus, in his im- 
patience to fulfil at once and for a moment, for a 
few short years, all the desires and conceptions 
of his soul, is willing to give in exchange his 
soul and body to the great enemy of mankind. 
Whatever he fancies, becomes by this means 
present to his sense : whatever he commands, is 
done. He calls back time past, and anticipates 
the future : the visions of antiquity pass before 
him, Babylon in all its glory, Paris and CEnone : 
all the projects of philosophers, or creations of 
the poet pay tribute at his feet : all the delights 
of fortune, of ambition, of pleasure, and of learn- 
ing are centered in his person ; and from a 
short-lived dream of supreme felicity and drunken 
power, he sinks into an abyss of darkness and 
perdition. This is the alternative to which he 
submits ; the bond which he signs with his blood ! 
As the outline of the character is grand and 
daring, the execution is abrupt and fearful. The 
thoughts are vast and irregular; and the style 
halts and staggers under them, " with uneasy 
steps ;" — " such footing found the sole of unblest 
feet." There is a little fustian and incongruity 
of metaphor now and then, which is not very in- 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 59 

jurious to the subject. It is time to give a few 
passages in illustration of this account. He thus 
opens his mind at the beginning : 

" How am I glutted with conceit of this 1 
Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please 1 
Resolve me of all ambiguities 1 
Perform what desperate enterprise I will 1 
I'll have them fly to India for gold, 
Ransack the ocean for orient pearl, 
And search all corners of the new-found world, 
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates. 
I'll have them read me strange philosophy, 
And tell the secrets of all foreign kings : 
I'll have them wall all Germany with brass, 
And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg ; 
I'll have them rill the public schools with skill, 
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad ; 
I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring, 
And chase the Prince of Parma from our land, 
And reign sole king of all the provinces : 
Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war 
Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp bridge, 
I'll make my servile spirits to invent. 

Enter Valdes and Cornelius. 

Come, German Valdes, and Cornelius, 

And make me blest with your sage conference. 

Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius, 

Know that your words have won me at the last, 

To practise magic and concealed arts. 

Philosophy is odious and obscure ; 

Both Law and Physic are for petty wits ; 

'Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish'd me. 



60 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt ; 
And I, that have with subtile syllogisms 
Gravell'd the pastors of the German church, 
And made the flow'ring pride of Witteuberg 
Swarm to my problems, as th' infernal spirits 
On sweet Musaeus when he came to hell; 
Will be as cunning as Agrippa was, 
Whose shadow made all Europe honour him. 

Valdes. These books, thy wit, and our experience 
Shall make all nations to canonize us. 
As Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords, 
So shall the Spirits of every element 
Be always serviceable to us three. 
Like lions shall they guard us when we please ; 
Like Almain Rutters with their horsemen's staves, 
Or Lapland giants trotting by our sides : 
Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids, 
Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows 
Than have the white breasts of the Queen of Love. 
From Venice they shall drag whole argosies, 
And from America the golden fleece, 
That yearly stuffs old Philip's treasury* ; 
If learned Faustus will be resolute. 

Faustus. As resolute am I in this 
As thou to live, therefore object it not." 

In his colloquy with the fallen angel, he shews 
the fixedness of his determination: — 

" What is great Mephostophilis so passionate 
For being deprived of the joys of heaven 1 
Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude, 
And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess/' 

• An anachronism. 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 01 

Yet we afterwards find him faltering in his 
resolution, and struggling with the extremity of 
his fate. 

" My heart is harden'd, I cannot repent: 

Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven : 
Swords, poisons, halters, and envenom'd steel 
Are laid before me to dispatch myself; 
And long ere this I should have done the deed, 
Had not sweet pleasure conquer'd deep despair. 
Have I not made blind Homer sing to me 
Of Alexander's love and CEnon's death ? 
And hath not he that built the walls of Thebes 

With ravishing soimds of his melodious harp, 

Made music with my Mephostophilis 1 

Why should I die then or basely despair ] 

I am resolv'd, Faustus shall not repent. 

Come, Mephostophilis, let us dispute again, 

And reason of divine astrology." 

There is one passage more of this kind, which 
is so striking and beautiful, so like a rapturous 
and deeply passionate dream, that I cannot help 
quoting it here : it is the address to the Appari- 
tion of Helen. 

" Enter Helen again, passing over between two Cupids. 

Faustus. Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, 
And burnt the topless tow'rs of Ilium 1 
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. 
Her lips suck forth my soul ! See where it flies. 
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. 
Here will I dwell, for Heav'u is in these lips, 



62 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

And all is dross that is not Helena. 
I will be Paris, and for love of thee, 
Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sack'd ; 
And I will combat with weak Menelaus, 
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest; 
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel, 
And then return to Helen for a kiss. 
— Oh ! thou art fairer than the evening air, 
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars : 
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter, 
When he appeared to hapless Semele ; 
More lovely than the monarch of the sky 
In wanton Arethusa's azure arms ; 
And none but thou shalt be my paramour." 

The ending of the play is terrible, and his 
last exclamations betray an anguish of mind and 
vehemence of passion, not to be contemplated 
without shuddering. 

— " Oh, Faustus! 

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, 
And then thou must be damn'd perpetually. 
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heav'n, 
That time may cease, and midnight never come. 
Fair nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make 
Perpetual day ; or let this hour be but a year, 
A month, a week, a natural day, 
That Faustus may repent, and save his soul. 

( The Clock strikes Twelve.) 

It strikes, it strikes ! Now, body, turn to air, 
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell. 
Oh soul ! be chang'd into small water-drops, 
And fall into the ocean ; ne'er be found. 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 63 

(Thunder, Enter the Devils.) 

Oh ! mercy, Heav'n ! Look not so fierce on me ! 
Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile ! — 
Ugly hell, gape not ! Come not, Lucifer ! 
I'll burn my books ! Oh ! Mephosto^hilis." 

Perhaps the finest trait in the whole play, and 
that which softens and subdues the horror of it, 
is the interest taken by the two scholars in the 
fate of their master, and their unavailing attempts 
to dissuade him from his relentless career. The 
regard to learning is the ruling passion of this 
drama; and its indications are as mild and 
amiable in them as its ungoverned pursuit has 
been fatal to Faustus. 

" Yet, for he was a scholar once admir'd 
For wondrous knowledge in our German schools, 
We'll give his mangled limbs due burial; 
And all the students, clothed in mourning black, 
Shall wait upon his heavy funeral." 

So the Chorus : 

" Cut is the branch that might have grown full strait, 
And burned is Apollo's laurel bough, 
That sometime grew within this learned man." 

And still more affecting are his own conflicts 
of mind and agonizing doubts on this subject 
just before, when he exclaims to his friends; 
:f Oh, gentlemen! Hear me with patience, and 



64 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

tremble not at my speeches. Though my heart 
pant and quiver to remember that I have been a 
student here these thirty years ; oh ! would I had 
never seen Wittenberg, never read book!" A 
finer compliment was never paid, nor a finer 
lesson ever read to the pride of learning. — The 
intermediate comic parts, in which Faustus is 
not directly concerned, are mean and grovelling 
to the last degree. One of the Clowns says to 
another: " Snails! what hast got there? A book? 
Why thou can'st not tell ne'er a word on't." 
Indeed, the ignorance and barbarism of the time, 
as here described, might almost justify Faustus's 
overstrained admiration of learning, and turn 
the heads of those who possessed it, from novelty 
and unaccustomed excitement, as the Indians are 
made drunk with wine! Goethe, the German 
poet, has written a drama on this tradition of his 
country, which is considered a master-piece. I 
cannot find, in Marlowe's play, any proofs of the 
atheism or impiety attributed to him, unless the 
belief in witchcraft and the Devil can be re- 
garded as such ; and at the time he wrote, not 
to have believed in both, would have been con- 
strued into the rankest atheism and irreligion. 
There is a delight, as Mr. Lamb says, " in 
dallying with interdicted subjects ;" but that does 
not, by any means, imply either a practical or 
speculative disbelief of them. 



HEY WOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 6$ 

Lust's Dominion; or, the Lascivious Queen, 
is referable to the same general style of writing ; 
and is a striking picture, or rather caricature, of the 
unrestrained love of power, not as connected with 
learning:, but with re°;al ambition and external 
sway. There is a good deal of the same intense 
passion, the same recklessness of purpose, the same 
smouldering fire within : but there is not any of the 
same relief to the mind in the lofty imaginative 
nature of the subject ; and the continual re- 
petition of plain practical villainy and undi- 
gested horrors disgusts the sense, and blunts 
the interest. The mind is hardened into ob- 
duracy, not melted into sympathy, by such bare- 
faced and barbarous cruelty. Eleazar, the Moor, 
is such another character as Aaron in Titus An- 
dronicus, and this play might be set down with- 
out injustice as " pue-fellow" to that. I should 
think Marlowe has a much fairer claim to be the 
author of Titus Andronicus than Shakespear, at 
least from internal evidence ; and the argument 
of Schlegel, that it must have been Shakespear's, 
because there was no one else capable of pro- 
ducing either its faults or beauties, fails in each 
particular. The Queen is the same character in 
both these plays ; and the business of the plot is 
carried on in much the same revolting manner, 
by making the nearest friends and relatives of 
the wretched victims the instruments of their suf- 



66 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

ferings and persecution by an arch-villain. To 
shew however, that the same strong-braced tone 
of passionate declamation is kept up, take the 
speech of Eleazar on refusing the proffered crown : 

" What do none rise ? 
No, no, for kings indeed are Deities. 
And who'd not (as the sun) in brightness shine ? 
To be the greatest is to be divine. 
Who among millions would not be the mightiest 1 
To sit in godlike state ; to have all eyes 
Dazzled with admiration, and all tongues 
Shouting loud prayers; to rob every heart 
Of love ; to have the strength of every arm ; 
A sovereign's name, why 'tis a sovereign charm. 
This glory round about me hath thrown beams : 
I have stood upon the top of Fortune's wheel, 
And backward turn'd the iron screw of fate. 
The destinies have spun a silken thread 
About my life ; yet thus I cast aside 
The shape of majesty, and on my knee 
To this Imperial state lowly resign 
This usurpation ; wiping off your fears 
Which stuck so hard upon me/' 

This is enough to shew the unabated vigour of 
the author's style. This strain is certainly doing 
justice to the pride of ambition, and the imputed 
majesty of kings. 

We have heard much of " Marlowe's mighty 
line," and this play furnishes frequent instances of 
it. There are a number of single lines that seem 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 67 

struck out in the heat of a glowing fancy, and 
leave a track of golden fire behind them. The 
following are a few that might be given. 

" I know he is not dead ; I know proud death 

Durst not behold such sacred majesty." 

* * ****** 

" Hang both your greedy ears upon my lips, 

Let them devour my speech, suck in my breath/' 

*** * **** 

" From discontent grows treason, 

And on the stalk of treason, death." 

* * * * **** 

" Tyrants swim safest in a crimson flood." 



The two following lines — 

" Oh ! I grow dull, and the cold hand of sleep 
Hath thrust his icy fingers in my breast" — 

are the same as those in King John — 

" And none of you will bid the winter come 
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw." 

And again the Moor's exclamation, 

" Now by the proud complexion of my cheeks, 
Ta'en from the kisses of the amorous sun" — 

is the same as Cleopatra's — 

" But I that am with Phoebus' amorous pinches black"— &c. 
F2 



68 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

Eleazar's sarcasm, 

1 " These dignities, 
Like poison, make men swell ; this rat's-bane honour, 
Ob, 'tis so sweet ! they'll lick it till they burst"— 

shews the utmost virulence of smothered spleen ; 
and his concluding strain of malignant exultation 
has been but tamely imitated by Young's Zanga. 

" Now tragedy, thou minion of the night, 
Rhamnusia's pewfellow*, to thee I'll sing, 
Upon a harp made of dead Spanish bones, 
The proudest instrument the world affords : 
To thee that never blushest, though thy cheeks 
Are full of blood, O Saint Revenge, to thee 
I consecrate my murders, all my stabs," &c. 

It may be worth while to observe, for the sake 
of the curious, that many of Marlowe's most sound- 
ing lines consist of monosyllables, or nearly so. 
The repetition of Eleazar's taunt to the Cardinal, 
retorting his own words upon him, " Spaniard 
or Moor, the saucy slave shall die" — may per- 
haps have suggested Falconbridge's spirited re- 
iteration of the phrase — " And hang a calve's 
skin on his recreant limbs." 

I do not think the rich Jew of Malta so 
characteristic a specimen of this writer's powers. 

* This expression seems to be ridiculed by Falstaff. 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 69 

It has not the same fierce glow of passion or 
expression. It is extreme in act, and outrageous 
in plot and catastrophe ; but it has not the same 
vigorous filling up. The author seems to have 
relied on the horror inspired by the subject, and 
the national disgust excited against the principal 
character, to rouse the feelings of the audience : 
for the rest, it is a tissue of gratuitous, unpro- 
voked, and incredible atrocities, which are com- 
mitted, one upon the back of the other, by the 
parties concerned, without motive, passion, or ob- 
ject. There are, notwithstanding, some striking 
passages in it, as Barabbas's description of the 
bravo, Philia Borzo*; the relation of his own un- 
accountable villainies to Ithamore; his rejoicing 
over his recovered jewels (C as the morning lark 
sings over her young;" and the backwardness he 
declares in himself to forgive the Christian in- 

* " He sent a shaggy, tattered, staring slave, 

That when he speaks, draws out his grisly beard, 

And winds it twice or thrice about his ear; 

Whose face has been a grind-stone for men's swords : 

His hands are hack'd, some fingers cut quite off, 

Who when he speaks, grunts like a hog, and looks 

Like one that is employ'd in catzerie, 

And cross-biting ; such a rogue 

As is the husband to a hundred whores ; 

And I by him must send three hundred crowns." 

Act IK 



70 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

juries that are offered him*, which may have 
given the idea of one of Shylock's speeches, 
where he ironically disclaims any enmity to the 
merchants on the same account. It is perhaps 
hardly fair to compare the Jew of Malta with the 
Merchant of Venice ; for it is evident, that Shake- 
spear's genius shews to as much advantage in 

* " In spite of these swine-eating Christians 
(Unchosen nation, never circumcised ; 
Such poor villains as were ne'er thought upon, 
Till Titus and Vespasian conquer'd us) 
Am I become as wealthy as I was. 
They hoped my daughter would have been a nun; 
But she's at home, and I have bought a house 
As great and fair as is the Governor's : 
And there, in spite of Malta, will I dwell, 
Having Ferneze's hand ; whose heart I'll have, 
Aye, and his son's too, or it shall go hard. 

I am not of the tribe of Levi, I, 
That can so soon forget an injury. 
We Jews can fawn like spaniels when we please ; 
And when we grin we bite ; yet are our looks 
As innocent and harmless as a Iamb s. 
I learn'd in Florence how to kiss my hand, 
Heave up my shoulders when they call me dog, 
And duck as low as any bare-foot Friar: 
Hoping to see them starve upon a stall, 
Or else be gather'd for in our synagogue, 
That when the offering bason comes to me, 
Even for charity I may spit into it." 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 71 

knowledge of character, in variety and stage- 
effect, as it does in point of general humanity. 

Edward II. is, according to the modern standard 
of composition, Marlowe's best play. It is writ- 
ten with few offences against the common rules, 
and in a succession of smooth and flowing lines. 
The poet however succeeds less in the voluptuous 
and effeminate descriptions which he here at- 
tempts, than in the more dreadful and violent 
bursts of passion. Edward II. is drawn with 
historic truth, but without much dramatic effect. 
The management of the plot is feeble and de- 
sultory ; little interest is excited in the various 
turns of fate ; the characters are too worthless, 
have too little energy, and their punishment is, 
in general, too well deserved, to excite our com- 
miseration ; so that this play will bear, on the 
whole, but a distant comparison with Shake- 
spear's Richard II. in conduct, power, or effect. 
But the death of Edward II. in Marlow's tra- 
gedy, is certainly superior to that of Shakespear's 
King ; and in heart-breaking distress, and the 
sense of human weakness, claiming pity from 
utter helplessness and conscious misery, is not 
surpassed by any writer whatever. 

" Edward. Weep'st thou already 1 List awhile to me, 
And then thy heart, were it as Gumey's is, 



72 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

Or as Matrevis, hewn from the Caucasus, 
Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale. 
This dungeon, where they keep me, is the sink 
Wherein the filth of all the castle falls. 

Lightborn, Oh villains. 

Edward. And here in mire and puddle have I stood 
This ten days' space; and lest that I should sleep, 
One plays continually upon a drum. 
They give me bread and water, being a king ; 
So that, for want of sleep and sustenance, 
My mind's distemper'd, and my body's numb'd : 
And whether I have limbs or no, 1 know not. 
Oh ! would my blood drop out from every vein, 
As doth this water from my tatter'd robes! 
Tell Isabel, the Queen, I look'd not thus, 
When for her sake I ran at tilt in France, 
And there unhors'd the Duke of Cleremont, M 

There are some excellent passages scattered 
up and down. The description of the King and 
Gaveston looking out of the palace window, and 
laughing at the courtiers as they pass, and that 
of the different spirit shewn by the lion and the 
forest deer, when wounded, are among the best. 
The Song " Come, live with me and be my love," 
to which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote an answer, 
is Marlowe's. 

Hey wood I shall mention next, as a direct con- 
trast to Marlowe in every thing but the smooth- 
ness of his verse. As Marlowe's imagination 
glows like a furnace, Heywood's is a gentle, 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 73 

lambent flame that purifies without consuming. 
His manner is simplicity itself. There is nothing 
supernatural, nothing startling, or terrific. He 
makes use of the commonest circumstances of 
every-day life, and of the easiest tempers, to shew 
the workings, or rather the inefficacy of the 
passions, the vis inertia of tragedy. His inci- 
dents strike from their very familiarity, and the 
distresses he paints invite our sympathy, from 
the calmness and resignation with which they 
are borne. The pathos might be deemed purer 
from its having no mixture of turbulence or vin- 
dictiveness in it ; and in proportion as the suf- 
ferers are made to deserve a better fate. In the 
midst of the most untoward reverses and cutting 
injuries, good-nature and good sense keep their 
accustomed sway. He describes men's errors 
with tenderness, and their duties only with zeal, 
and the heightenings of a poetic fancy. His style 
is equally natural, simple, and unconstrained. 
The dialogue (bating the verse), is such as might 
be uttered in ordinary conversation. It is beau- 
tiful prose put into heroic measure. It is not so 
much that he uses the common English idiom for 
every thing ( for that I think the most poetical 
and impassioned of our elder dramatists do 
equally ) , but the simplicity of the characters, and 
the equable flow of the sentiments do not re- 
quire or suffer it to be warped from the tone of 



74 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

level speaking, by figurative expressions, or hy- 
perbolical allusions. A few scattered exceptions 
occur now and then, where the hectic flush of 
passion forces them from the lips, and they are 
not the worse for being rare. Thus, in the play 
called A Woman killed with Kindness, Wen- 
doll, when reproached by Mrs. Frankford with 
his obligations to her husband, interrupts her 
hastily, by saying 

" Oh speak no more ! 



For more than this I know, and have recorded 
Within the red-leaved table of my heart." 

And further on, Frankford, when doubting his 
wife's fidelity, says, with less feeling indeed, 
but with much elegance of fancy, 

" Cold drops of sweat sit dangling on my hairs, 
Like morning dew upon the golden flow'rs." 

So also, when returning to his house at mid- 
night to make the fatal discovery, he exclaims, 

" Astonishment, 
Fear, and amazement beat upon my heart, 
Even as a madman beats upon a drum." 

It is the reality of things present to their ima- 
ginations, that makes these writers so fine, so 
bold, and yet so true in what they describe. 
Nature lies open to them like a book, and was 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 75 

not to them " invisible, or dimly seen" through 
a veil of words and filmy abstractions. Such 
poetical ornaments are however to be met with 
at considerable intervals in this play, and do not 
disturb the calm serenity and domestic simplicity 
of the author's style. The conclusion of Wen- 
doll's declaration of love to Mrs. Frankford may 
serve as an illustration of its general merits, both 
as to thought and diction. 

" Fair, and of all beloved, I was not fearful 
Bluntly to give my life into your hand, 
And at one hazard, all my earthly means. 
Go, tell your husband : he will turn me off, 
And I am then undone. I care not, I ; 
Twas for your sake. Perchance in rage he'll kill me; 
I care not; 'twas for you. Say I incur 
The general name of villain thro' the world, 
Of traitor to my friend : I care not, I ; 
Poverty, shame, death, scandal, and reproach, 
For you I'll hazard all : why what care I ? 
For you I love, and for your love I'll die." 

The affecting remonstrance of Frankford to 
his wife, and her repentant agony at parting 
with him, are already before the public, in Mr. 
Lamb's Specimens. The winding up of this 
play is rather awkwardly managed, and the mo- 
ral is, according to established usage, equivocal. 
It required only Frankford's reconciliation to his 
wife, as well as his forgiveness of her, for the 



76 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

highest breach of matrimonial duty, to have 
made a Woman Killed with Kindness a com- 
plete anticipation of the Stranger. Heywood, 
however, was in that respect but half a Kot- 
zebue ! — The view here given of country manners 
is truly edifying. As in the higher walk of tra- 
gedy we see the manners and moral sentiments 
of kings and nobles of former times, here we 
have the feuds and amiable qualities of country 
'squires and their relatives; and such as were 
the rulers, such were their subjects. The fre- 
quent quarrels and ferocious habits of private 
life are well exposed in the fatal rencounter 
between Sir Francis Acton and Sir Charles 
Mountford about a hawking match, in the ruin 
and rancorous persecution of the latter in con- 
sequence, and in the hard, unfeeling, cold- 
blooded treatment he receives in his distress from 
his own relations, and from a fellow of the name 
of Shafton. After reading the sketch of this last 
character, who is introduced as a mere ordinary 
personage, the representative of a class, without 
any preface or apology, no one can doubt the cre- 
dibility of that of Sir Giles Over-reach, who is 
professedly held up ( I should think almost un- 
justly) as a prodigy of grasping and hardened 
selfishness. The influence of philosophy and 
prevalence of abstract reasoning, if it has done 
nothing for our poetry, has done, I should hope, 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, <fec. 77 

something for our manners. The callous decla- 
ration of one of these unconscionable churls, 

" This is no world in which to pity men," 

might have been taken as a motto for the good 
old times in general, and with a very few reser- 
vations, if Heywood has not grossly libelled 
them. — Heywood's plots have little of artifice or 
regularity of design to recommend them. He 
writes on carelessly, as it happens, and trusts to 
Nature, and a certain happy tranquillity of spirit, 
for gaining the favour of the audience. He is 
said, besides attending to his duties as an actor, 
to have composed regularly a sheet a day. This 
may account in some measure for the unembar- 
rassed facility of his style. His own account 
makes the number of his writings for the stage, 
or those in which he had a main hand, upwards 
of 200. In fact, I do not wonder at any quantity 
that an author is said to have written ; for the 
more a man writes, the more he can write. 

The same remarks will apply, with certain 
modifications, to other remaining works of this 
writer, the Royal King and Loyal Subject, a Chal- 
lenge for Beauty, and the English Traveller. 
The barb of misfortune is sheathed in the mild- 
ness of the writer's temperament, and the story 



78 ON LILY, MARLOW, 

jogs on very comfortably, without effort or re- 
sistance, to the euthanasia of the catastrophe. In 
two of these, the person principally aggrieved 
survives, and feels himself none the worse for it. 
The most spleiidid passage in Heywood's come- 
dies is the account of Shipwreck by Drink, in 
the English Traveller, which was the foundation 
of Cowley's Latin poem, Naufragium Joculare. 

The names of Middleton and Rowley, with 
which I shall conclude this Lecture, generally 
appear together as two writers who frequently 
combined their talents in the production of joint- 
pieces. Middleton (judging from their separate 
works) was " the more potent spirit" of the 
two; but they were neither of them equal to some 
others. Rowley appears to have excelled in de- 
scribing a certain amiable quietness of disposi- 
tion and disinterested tone of morality, carried 
almost to a paradoxical excess, as in his Fair 
Quarrel, and in the comedy of A Woman never 
Vexed, which is written, in many parts, with a 
pleasing simplicity and naivete equal to the no- 
velty of the conception. Middleton's style was 
not marked by any peculiar quality of his own, 
but was made up, in equal proportions, of the 
faults and excellences common to his contempo- 
raries. In his Women Beware Women, there 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 79 

is a rich marrowy vein of internal sentiment, 
with fine occasional insight into human nature, 
and cool cutting irony of expression. He is 
lamentably deficient in the plot and denouement 
of the story. It is like the rough draught of a 
tragedy, with a number of fine things thrown in, 
and the best made use of first ; but it tends to no 
fixed goal, and the interest decreases, instead of 
increasing, as we read on, for want of previous 
arrangement and an eye to the whole. We have 
fine studies of heads, a piece of richly-coloured 
drapery, " a foot, an hand, an eye from Nature 
drawn, that's worth a history ; : ' but the groups 
are ill disposed, nor are the figures proportioned 
to each other or the size of the canvas. The 
author's power is in the subject, not over it; or 
he is in possession of excellent materials, which 
he husbands very ill. This character, though it 
applies more particularly to Middleton, might 
be applied generally to the age. Shakespear 
alone seemed to stand over his work, and to do 
what he pleased with it. He saw to the end of 
what he was about, and with the same faculty of 
lending himself to the impulses of Nature and the 
impression of the moment, never forgot that he 
himself had a task to perform, nor the place 
which each figure ought to occupy in his general 
design. — The characters of Livia, of Bianca, of 
Leantio and his Mother, in the play of which I 



80 ON LYLY, MAKLOW, 

am speaking, are all admirably drawn. The art 
and malice of Livia shew equal want of principle 
and acquaintance with the world ; and the scene 
in which she holds the mother in suspense, while 
she betrays the daughter into the power of the 
profligate Duke, is a master-piece of dramatic 
skill. The proneness of Bianca to tread the 
primrose path of pleasure, after she has made the 
first false step, and her sudden transition from 
unblemished virtue to the most abandoned vice, 
in which she is notably seconded by her mother- 
in-law's ready submission to the temptations of 
wealth and power, form a true and striking pic- 
ture. The first intimation of the intrigue that 
follows, is given in a way that is not a little re- 
markable for simplicity and acuteness, Bianca 
says, 

" Did not the Duke look upt Methought he saw us." 

To which the more experienced mother answers, 

" That's every one's conceit that sees a Duke. 
If he look stedfastly, he looks straight at them, 
When he perhaps, good careful gentleman, 
Never minds any, but the look he casts 
Is at his own intentions, and his object 
Only the public good." 

It turns out however, that he had been looking 
at them, and not " at the public good." The 
moral of this tragedy is rendered more impressive 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 81 

from the manly, independent character of Leantio 
in the first instance, and the manner in which he 
dwells, in a sort of doting abstraction, on his 
own comforts, in being possessed of a beautiful 
and faithful wife. As he approaches his own 
house, and already treads on the brink of per- 
dition, he exclaims with an exuberance of satis- 
faction not to be restrained — 



" How near am I to a happiness 
That earth exceeds not ! Not another like it : 
The treasures of the deep are not so precious, 
As are the conceal'd comforts of a man 
Lock'd up in woman's love. I scent the air 
Of blessings when I come but near the house : 
What a delicious breath marriage sends forth ! 
The violet-bed's not sweeter. Honest wedlock 
Is like a banquetting-house built in a garden, 
On which the spring's chaste flowers take delight 
To cast their modest odours ; when base lust, 
With all her powders, paintings, and best pride, 
Is but a fair house built by a ditch side. 
When I behold a glorious dangerous strumpet, 
Sparkling in beauty and destruction too, 
Both at a twinkling, I do liken straight 
Her beautified body to a goodly temple 
That's built on vaults where carcasses lie rotting ; 
And so by little and little I shrink back again, 
And quench desire with a cool meditation ; 
And I'm as well, methiuks. Now for a welcome 
Able to draw men's envies upon man : 
A kiss now that will hang upon my lip, 
As sweet as morning clew upon a rose, 
G 



82 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

And full as long ; after a five days fast 
She'll be so greedy now and cling about me : 
I take care how I shall be rid of her ; 
And here 't begins." 

This dream is dissipated by the entrance of 
Bianca and his Mother. 

° Bian. Oh, sir, you're welcome home. 

Moth. Oh, is he come 1 I am glad on't. 

Lean. (Aside.) Is that all ] 
Why this is dreadful how as sudden death 
To some rich man, that flatters all his sins 
With promise of repentance when he's old, 
And dies in the midway before he comes to't. 
Sure you're not well, Biancha ! How dost, prithee ? 

Bian. I have been better than I am at this time. 

Lean. Alas, I thought so. 

Bian. Nay, I have been worse too, 
Than now you see me, sir. 

Lean. I'm glad thou mendst yet, 
I feel my heart mend too. How came it to thee 1 
Has any thing dislik'd thee in my absence 1 

Bian. No, certain, I have had the best content 
That Florence can afford. 

Lean. Thou makest the best on't : 
Speak, mother, what's the cause 1 you must needs know. 

Moth. Troth, I know none, son ; let her speak herself; 
Unless it be the same gave Lucifer a tumbling cast ; that's 
pride. 

Bian. Methinks this house stands nothing to my mind ; 
I'd have some pleasant lodging i' th' high street, sir ; 
Or if 'twere near the court, sir, that were much better ; 
'Tis a sweet recreation for a gentlewoman 
To stand in a bay-window, and see gallants. 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. S'3 

Lean. Now I have another temper, a mere stranger 
To that of yours, it seems ; I should delight 
To see none but yourself. 

Bian. I praise not that ; 
Too fond is as unseemly as too churlish : 
I would not have a husband of that proneness, 
To kiss me before company, for a world : 
Beside, 'tis tedious to see one thing still, sir, 
Be it the best that ever heart affected ; 
Nay, were't yourself, whose love had power you know 
To bring me from my friends, I would not stand thus, 
And gaze upon you always ; troth, I could not, sir ; 
As good be blind, and have no use of sight, 
As look on one thing still : what's the eye's treasure, 
But change of objects? You are learned, sir, 
And know I speak not ill ; 'tis full as virtuous 
For woman's eye to look on several men, 
As for her heart, sir, to be fixed on one. 

Lean. Now thou com'st home to me ; a kiss for that word. 

Bian. No matter for a kiss, sir ; let it pass ; 
'Tis but a toy, we'll not so much as mind it; 
Let's talk of other business, and forget it. 
What news now of the pirates 1 any stirring 1 
Prithee discourse a little. 

Moth. (Aside. J I am glad he's here yet 
To see her tricks himself ; I had lied monst'rously 
If I had told 'em first. 

Lean. Speak, what's the humour, sweet, 
You make your lips so strange ? This was not wont. 

Bian. Is there no kindness betwixt man and wife, 
Unless they make a pigeon-house of friendship, 
And be still billing 1 'tis the idlest fondness 
That ever was invented ; and 'tis pity 
It's grown a fashion for poor gentlewomen ; 
g2 



S4 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

There's many a disease kiss'd in a year by't, 
And a French court'sy made to't : Alas, sir, 
Think of the world, how we shall live, grow serious ; 
We have been married a whole fortnight now. 

Lean, How ? a whole fortnight ! why, is that so long 1 

Bian. Tis time to leave off dalliance ; 'tis a doctrine 
Of your own teaching, if you be remember'd, 
And I was bound to obey it. 

Moth. (Aside.) Here's one fits him ; 
This was well catch'd i' faith, son, like a fellow 
That rids another country of a plague, 
And brings it home with him to his own house. 

[A Messenger from the Duke knocks within. 
Who knocks? 

Lean. Who's there now? Withdraw you, Biancha ; 
Thou art a gem no stranger's eye must see, 
Howe'er thou'rt pleas'd now to look dull on me. 

[Exit Biancha" 

The Witch of Middleton is his most remark- 
able performance ; both on its own account, and 
from the use that Shakespear has made of some 
of the characters and speeches in his Macbeth. 
Though the employment which Middleton has 
given to Hecate and the rest, in thwarting the 
purposes and perplexing the business of familiar 
and domestic life, is not so grand or appalling as 
the more stupendous agency which Shakespear 
has assigned them, yet it is not easy to deny the 
merit of the first invention to Middleton, who has 
embodied the existing superstitions of the time, 
respecting that anomalous class of beings, with a 
high spirit of poetry, of the most grotesque and 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. S5 

fanciful kind. The songs and incantations made 
use of are very nearly the same. The other parts 
of this play are not so good ; and the solution of 
the principal difficulty, by Antonio's falling down 
a trap-door, most lame and impotent. As a spe- 
cimen of the similarity of the preternatural ma- 
chinery, I shall here give one entire scene. 

" The Witches' Habitation. 
Enter Heccat, Stadlin, Hoppo, and other Witches. 

Hec. The moon's a gallant : see how brisk she rides. 

Stad. Here's a ricli evening, Heccat. 

Hec. Aye, is't not, wenches, 
To take a journey of five thousand miles? 

Hop. Our's will be more to-night. 

Hec. Oh, 'twill be precious. Heard you the owl yet ? 

Stad. Briefly, in the copse, 
As we came thro* now. 

Hec. 'Tis high time for us then. 

Stad. There was a bat hung at my lips three times 
As we came thro' the woods, and drank her fill : 
Old Puckle saw her. 

Hec. You are fortunate still, 
The very scritch-owl lights upon your shoulder, 
And woos you like a pidgeon. Are you furnish'd ? 
Have you your ointments 1 

Stad. All. 

Hec. Prepare to flight then. 
I'll overtake you swiftly. 

Stad. Hye then, Heccat ! 
We shall be up betimes. 

Hec. I'll reach you quickly. [They ascend. 



S6 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 



Enter Firestone. 

Fire. They are all going a birding to-night. They talk of 
fowls i' th' air, that fly by da} 7 , I'm sure they'll be a company 
of foul sluts there to-night. If we have not mortality af- 
feared, 111 be hang'd, for they are able to putrify it, to in- 
fect a whole region. She spies me now. 

Hec. What, Firestone, our sweet son 1 

Fire. A little sweeter than some of you; or a dunghill 
were too good for me. 

Hec. How much hast there? 

Fire. Nineteen, and all brave plump ones; besides six 
lizards, and three serpentine eggs. 

Hec. Dear and sweet boy ! What herbs hast thou 1 

Fire. I have some mar-martin, and man-dragon. 

Hec. Marmarittin, and mandragora, thou would'st say. 

Fire. Here's pannax too. I thank thee ; my pan akes, I 
am sure, with kneeling down to cut 'em. 

Hec. And selago, 
Hedge-hissop too ! How near he goes my cuttings ! 
Were they all cropt by moon-light? 

Fire. Every blade of 'em, or I am a moon-calf, mother. 

Hec. Hie thee home with 'em. 
Look well to th' house to-night : I'm for aloft. 

Fire. Aloft, quoth you 1 I would yow would break your 
neck once, that I might have all quickly (Aside). — Hark, 
hark, mother ! They are above the steeple already, flying over 
your head with a noise of musicians. 

Hec. They are indeed. Help me ! Help me ! I'm too late 
else. 

SONG, (in the air above). 

Come away, come away ! 
Heccat, Heccat, come away ! 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 87 

Hec. I come, I come, I come, I come, 
With all the speed I may, 
With all the speed I may. 

Where's Stadlin 1 
(Above J. Here. 
Hec. Where's Puckle? 
(Above). Here: 

And Hoppo too, and Hellwain too : 

We lack but you, we lack but you. 

Come away, make up the count ! 
Hec. I will but 'noiut, and then I mount. 

(A Spirit descends in the shape of a Cat). 

(Above), There's one come down to fetch his dues; 
A kiss, a coll, a sip of blood ; 
And why thou stay'st so long, I muse, I muse, 
Since th' air's so sweet and good 1 
Hec. Oh, art thou come, 

What news, what news 1 
Spirit. All goes still to our delight, 
Either come, or else 
Refuse, refuse. 
Hec. Now I am furnish'd for the flight. 
Fire. Hark, hark! The cat sings a brave treble in her 

own language. 
Hec. (Ascending with the Spirit). 
Now I go, now I fly, 
Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I. 
Oh, what a dainty pleasure 'tis 
To ride in the air 
When the moon shines fair, 
And sing, and dance, and toy, and kiss ! 
Over woods, high rocks, and mountains, 
Over seas our mistress' fountains, 






8S ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

Over steep towers and turrets, 
We fly by night, 'mongst troops of spirits. 
No ring of bells to our ears sounds, 
No howls of wolves, no yelp of hounds ; 
No, not the noise of water's breach, 
Or cannon's roar, our height can reach. 
(Above). No ring of bells, &c. 

Fire. Well, mother, I thank you for your kindness. You 
must be gamboling i' th' air, and leave me here like a fool and 
a mortal. [Exit" 

The Incantation scene at the cauldron, is also 
the original of that in Macbeth, and is in like 
manner introduced by the Duchess's visiting 
the Witches' Habitation. 

" Tlie Witches' Habitation. 
Enter Duchess, Heccat, Firestone. 

Hec, What death is't you desire for Almachildes ? 

Duch. A sudden and a subtle. 

Hec. Then I've fitted you. 
Here lie the gifts of both ; sudden and subtle ; 
His picture made in wax, and gently molten 
By a blue fire, kindled with dead men's eyes, 
Will waste him by degrees. 

Duch. In what time, pr'y thee ? 

Hec. Perhaps in a month's progress. 

Duch. What? A month? 
Out upon pictures ! If they be so tedious, 
Give me things with some life. 

Hec. Then seek no farther. 

Duch. This must be done with speed, dispatched this night, 
If it may possibly. 



HEYWOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. §9 

Hec. I have it for you : 
Here's that will do't. Stay but perfection's time, 
And that's not five hours hence. 

Duch. Can'st thou do this 1 

Hec. Can I ? 

Duch. I mean, so closely. 

Hec. So closely do you mean too 1 | 

Duch. So artfully, so cunningly. 

Hec. Worse and worse ; doubts and incredulities, 
They make me mad. Let scrupulous creatures know, 

Cum volui, ripis ipsis mirantibus, amnes 
Infontes rediere suos: concussaque sisto, 
Stantia conditio cantufreta; nubila pello, 
Nubilaquc induco : ventos abigoque vocoque. 
Viper eas rumpo verbis et carmine fauces ; 
Et silvas moveo, jubeoque tremiscere monies, 
Et mugire solum, manesque exire sepulchres. 
Te quoque luna traho. 

Can you doubt me then, daughter 1 ? 

That can make mountains tremble, miles of woods walk; 

Whole earth's foundations bellow, and the spirits 

Of the entomb'd to burst out from their marbles ; 

Nay, draw yon moon to ray involved designs 1 

Fire. I know as well as can be when my mother's mad, and 
our great cat angry ; for one spits French then, and th' other 
spits Latin. 

Duch. I did not doubt you, mother. 

Hec. No ? what did you 1 
My power's so firm, it is not to be question'd. 

Duch. Forgive what's past : and now I know th' offensive- 
ness 
That vexes art, I'll shun th' occasion ever. 

Hec. Leave all to me and my five sisters, daughter. 
It shall be conveyed in at howlet-time. 



90 ON LYLY, MARLOW, 

Take you no care. My spirits know their moments ; 

Raven or scritch-owl never fly by th' door, 

But they call in (I thank 'em), and they lose not by 't. 

I give em barley soak'd in infants' blood : 

They shall have semina cum sanguine. 

Their gorge cramm'd full, if they come once to our house : 

We are no niggard. [Exit Duchess. 

Fire. They fare but too well when they come hither. They 
ate up as much t' other night as would have made me a good 
conscionable pudding. 

Hec. Give me some lizard's brain : quickly, Firestone ! 
Where's grannam Stadlin, and all the rest o' th' sisters 1 

Fire. Ail at hand, forsooth. 

Hec. Give me marmaritin ; some bear-breech. When 1 

Fire. Here's bear-breech and lizard's brain, forsooth. 

Hec. Into the vessel ; 
And fetch three ounces of the red-hair'd girl 
I kill'd last midnight. 

Fire. Whereabouts, sweet mother? 

Hec. Hip; hip or flank. Where is the acopus? 

Fire. You shall have acopus, forsooth. 

Hec. Stir, stir about, whilst I begin the charm. 

A CHARM SONG, 
(The Witches going about the Cauldron). 

Black spirits, and white ; red spirits, and gray ; 
Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may. 

Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in ; 

Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky ; 

Liard, Robin, you must bob in. 
Round, around, around, about, about ; 
All ill come running in ; all good keep out ! 

1st Witch. Here's the blood of a bat. 

Hec. Put in that ; oh, put in that. 



HEY WOOD, MIDDLETON, &c. 91 

2d Witch. Here's libbard's-bane. 

Hec. Put in again. 

1st Witch. The juice of toad; the oil of adder. 

2d Witch. Those will make the yonker madder. 

Hec. Put in: there's all, and rid the stench. 

Fire. Nay, here's three ounces of the red-hair'd wench. 

All. Round, around, around, &c. 

Hec. See, see enough : into the vessel with it. 

There ; 't hath the true perfection. I'm so light 

At any mischief: there's no villainy 

But is in tune, methinks. 
Fire. A tune ! 'Tis to the tune of damnation then. I war- 
rant you that song hath a villainous burthen. 

Hec. Come, my sweet sisters ; let the air strike our 

tune, 

Whilst we show reverence to yond peeping moon. 
[The Witches dance, and then exeunt." 

I will conclude this account with Mr. Lambs 
observations on the distinctive characters of these 
extraordinary and formidable personages, as they 
are described by Middleton or Shakespear. 

" Though some resemblance may be traced 
between the charms in Macbeth and the incanta- 
tions in this play, which is supposed to have 
preceded it, this coincidence will not detract 
much from the originality of Shakespear. His 
witches are distinguished from the witches of 
Middleton by essential differences. These are 
creatures to whom man or woman, plotting some 
dire mischief, might resort for occasional consul- 



9<Z ON LYLY, MARLOW, &c. 

tation. Those originate deeds of blood, and 
begin bad impulses to men. From the moment 
that their eyes first meet Macbeth's, he is spell- 
bound. That meeting sways his destiny. He 
can never break the fascination. These Witches 
can hurt the body ; those have power over the 
soul. — Hecate, in Middleton, has a son, a low 
buffoon : the Hags of Shakespear have neither 
child of their own, nor seem to be descended 
from any parent. They are foul anomalies, of 
whom we know not whence they sprung, nor 
whether they have beginning or ending. As 
they are without human passions, so they seem 
to be without human relations. They come with 
thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy music. 
This is all we know of them. — Except Hecate, 
they have no names, which heightens their 
mysteriousness. The names, and some of the 
properties which Middleton has given to his 
Hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are 
serious things. Their presence cannot consist 
with mirth. But in a lesser degree, the Witches 
of Middleton are fine creations. Their power 
too is, in some measure, over the mind. They 
" ' raise jars, jealousies, strifes, like a thick scurf 
o'er life.'" 



LECTURE III. 



ON 

MARSTON, CHAPMAN, DECKAR, AND WEBSTER, 

The writers of whom I have already treated, 
may be said to have been " no mean men;" 
those of whom I have yet to speak, are certainly 
no whit inferior. Would that I could do them 
any thing like justice ! It is not difficult to give 
at least their seeming due to great and well- 
known names ; for the sentiments of the reader 
meet the descriptions of the critic more than 
half way, and clothe what is perhaps vague and 
extravagant praise with a substantial form and 
distinct meaning. But in attempting to extol 
the merits of an obscure work of genius, our 
words are either lost in empty air, or are " blown 
stifling back" upon the mouth that utters them. 
The greater those merits are, and the truer the 
praise, the more suspicious and disproportionate 
does it almost necessarily appear ; for it has no 
relation to any image previously existing in the 
public mind, and therefore looks like an imposi- 
tion fabricated out of nothing.' In this case, the 



<H ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

only way that I know of is, to make these old 
writers (as much as can be) vouchers for their 
own pretensions, which they are well able to 
make good. I shall in the present Lecture give 
some account of Marston and Chapman, and 
afterwards of Deckar and Webster. 

Marston is a writer of great merit, who rose 
to tragedy from the ground of comedy, and whose 
forte was not sympathy, either with the stronger 
or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and 
bitter indignation against the vices and follies of 
men, which vented itself either in comic irony or 
in lofty invective. He was properly a satirist. 
He was not a favourite with his contemporaries, 
nor they with him. He was first on terms of 
great intimacy, and afterwards at open war, 
with Ben Jonson ; and he is most unfairly cri- 
ticised in The Return from Parnassus, under 
the name of Monsieur Kinsayder, as a mere 
libeller and buffoon. Writers in their life-time 
do all they can to degrade and vilify one ano- 
ther, and expect posterity to have a very tender 
care of their reputations ! The writers of this 
age, in general, cannot however be reproached 
with this infirmity. The number of plays that 
they wrote in conjunction, is a proof of the con- 
trary; and a circumstance no less curious, as 
to the division of intellectual labour, than the 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 95 

cordial union of sentiment it implied. Unlike 
most poets, the love of their art surmounted 
their hatred of one another. Genius was not 
become a vile and vulgar pretence, and they 
respected in others what they knew to be true 
inspiration in themselves. They courted the ap- 
plause of the multitude, but came to one another 
for judgment and assistance. When we see these 
writers working- together on the same admirable 
productions, year after year, as was the case with 
Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton and Rowley, 
with Chapman, Deckar, and Jonson, it reminds 
one of Ariosto's eloquent apostrophe to the Spirit 
of Ancient Chivalry, when he has seated his rival 
knights, Renaldo and Ferraw, on the same horse. 

" Oh ancient knights of true and noble heart, 
They rivals were, one faith they liv'd not under ; 
Besides, they felt their bodies shrewdly smart 
Of blows late given, and yet (behold a wonder) 
Thro' thick and thin, suspicion set apart, 
Like friends they ride, and parted not asunder, 
Until the horse with double spurring drived 
Unto a way parted in two, arrived *." 

Marston's Antonio and Mellida is a tragedy 
of considerable force and pathos ; but in the most 
critical parts, the author frequently breaks off or 
flags without any apparent reason but want of 
interest in his subject ; and farther, the best and 

* Sir John Harrington's translation. 



96 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

most affecting situations and bursts of feeling are 
too evidently imitations of Shakespear. Thus 
the unexpected meeting between Andrugio and 
Lucio, in the beginning of the third act, is a 
direct counterpart of that between Lear and 
Kent, only much weakened : and the interview 
between Antonio and Mellida has a strong re- 
semblance to the still more affecting one between 
Lear and Cordelia, and is most wantonly dis- 
figured by the sudden introduction of half a page 
of Italian rhymes, which gives the whole an air 
of burlesque. The conversation of Lucio and 
Andrugio, again, after his defeat seems to invite, 
but will not bear a comparison with Richard the 
Second's remonstrance with his courtiers, who 
offered him consolation in his misfortunes ; and no 
one can be at a loss to trace the allusion to Ro- 
meo's conduct on being apprized of his banish- 
ment, in the termination of the following speech. 

" Antonio. Each man takes hence life, but no man death: 
He's a good fellow, and keeps open house : 
A thousand thousand ways lead to his gate, 
To his wide-mouthed porch : when niggard life 
Hath but one little, little wicket through. 
We wring ourselves into this wretched world 
To pule and weep, exclaim, to curse and rail, 
To fret and ban the fates, to strike the earth 
As I do now, Antonio, curse-thy birth, 
And die." 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 97 

The following short passage might be quoted 
as one of exquisite beauty and originality— 

— " As having clasp'd a rose 
Within my palm, the rose being ta'en away, 
My hand retains a little breath of sweet ; 
So may man's trunk, his spirit slipp'd away, 
Hold still a faint perfume of his sweet guest." - 

Act IV. Scene 1 . 

The character of Felice in this play is an ad- 
mirable satirical accompaniment, and is the fa- 
vourite character of this author (in all probability 
his own), that of a shrewd, contemplative cynic, 
and sarcastic spectator in the drama of human 
life. It runs through all his plays, is shared by 
Quadratus and Lampatho in What you Will 
( it is into the mouth of the last of these that he 
has put that fine invective against the uses of 
philosophy, in the account of himself and his 
spaniel, " who still slept while he baus'd leaves, 
tossed o'er the dunces, por'd on the old print" ) , 
and is at its height in the Fawn and Malevole, 
in his Parasitaster and Malcontent. These two 
comedies are his chef cFceuvres. The character 
of the Duke Hercules of Ferrara, disguised as 
the Parasite, in the first of these, is well sustained 
throughout, with great sense, dignity, and spirit. 
He is a wise censurer of men and things, and 
rails at the world with charitable bitterness. 



98 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

He may put in a claim to a sort of family like- 
ness to the Duke, in Measure for Measure : only 
the latter descends from his elevation to watch 
in secret over serious crimes ; the other is only a 
spy on private follies. There is something in 
this cast of character (at least in comedy — per- 
haps it neutralizes the tone and interest in tra- 
gedy), that finds a wonderful reciprocity in the 
breast of the reader or audience. It forms a kind 
of middle term or point of union between the 
busy actors in the scene and the indifferent bye- 
stander, insinuates the plot, and suggests a num- 
ber of good wholesome reflections, for the sa- 
gacity and honesty of which we do not fail to 
take credit to ourselves. We are let into its 
confidence, and have a perfect reliance on its 
sincerity. Our sympathy with it is without any 
drawback ; for it has no part to perform itself, 
and " is nothing, if not critical." It is a sure 
card to play. We may doubt the motives of 
heroic actions, or differ about the just limits and 
extreme workings of the passions ; but the pro- 
fessed misanthrope is a character that no one 
need feel any scruples in trusting, since the dis- 
like of folly and knavery in the abstract is com- 
mon to knaves and fools with the wise and 
honest! Besides the instructive moral vein of 
Hercules as the Fawn or Parasitaster, which 
contains a world of excellent matter, most aptly 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 99 

and wittily delivered ; there are two other cha- 
racters perfectly hit off, Gonzago the old prince 
of Urbino, and Granuffo, one of his lords in 
waiting. The loquacious, good-humoured, un- 
disguised vanity of the one is excellently relieved 
by the silent gravity of the other. The wit of 
this last character (Granuffo) consists in his 
not speaking a word through the whole play; he 
never contradicts what is said, and only assents 
by implication. He is a most infallible courtier, 
and follows the prince like his shadow, who thus 
graces his pretensions. 

" We would be private, only Faunus stay; he is a wise 
fellow, daughter, a very wise fellow, for he is still just of ray 
opinion ; my Lord Granuffo, you may likewise stay, for I 
know you'll say nothing." 

And again, a little farther on, he says — 

" Faunus, this Granuffo is a right wise good lord, a man 
of excellent discourse, and never speaks ; his signs to me and 
men of profound reach instruct abundantly ; he begs suits 
with signs, gives thanks with signs, puts off his hat leisurely, 
maintains his beard learnedly, keeps his lust privately, makes 
a nodding leg courtly, and lives happily." — " Silence," replies 
Hercules, " is an excellent modest grace ; but especially before 
so instructing a wisdom as that of your Excellency." 

The garrulous self-complacency of this old lord 
is kept up in a vein of pleasant humour ; an in- 
stance of which might be given in his owning of 

l.q : :. h2 



100 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

some learned man, that " though he was no 
duke, yet he was wise;" and the manner in 
which the others play upon this foible, and make 
him contribute to his own discomfiture, without 
his having the least suspicion of the plot against 
him, is full of ingenuity and counterpoint. In 
the last scene he says, very characteristically, 

" Of all creatures breathing, I do hate those things that 
struggle to seem wise, and yet are indeed very fools. I re- 
member when I was a young man, in my father's days, there 
were four gallant spirits for resolution, as proper for body, as 
witty in discourse, as any were in Europe ; nay, Europe had 
not such. I was one of them. We four did all love one lady ; 
a most chaste virgin she was : we all enjoyed her, and so en- 
joyed her, that, despite the strictest guard was set upon her, 
we had her at our pleasure. I speak it for her honour, and 
my credit. Where shall you find such witty fellows now 
a-days ? Alas ! how easy is it in these weaker times to cross 
love-tricks ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! Alas, alas ! I smile to think (I 
must confess with some glory to mine own wisdom), to think 
how I found out, and crossed, and curbed, and in the end 
made desperate Tiberio's love. Alas ! good silly youth, that 

dared to cope with age and such a beard ! 

Hercules. But what yet might your well-known wisdom 
think, 

If such a one, as being most severe, 

A most protested opposite to the match 

Of two young lovers ; who having barr'd them speech, 

All interviews, all messages, all means 

To plot their wished ends ; even he himself 

Was by their cunning made the go-between, 

The only messenger, the token-carrier ; 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTEB. 101 

Told them the times when they might fitly meet, 
Nay, shew'd the way to one another's bed T 

To which Gonzago replies, in a strain of ex- 
ulting dotage : 

" May one have the sight of such a fellow for nothing ? 
Doth there breathe such an egregious ass 1 Is there such a 
foolish animal in rerum natural How is it possible such a 
simplicity can exist 1 Let us not lose our laughing at him, for 
God's sake ; let folly's sceptre light upon him, and to the ship 
of fools with him instantly. 

Dondolo. Of all these follies I arrest your grace." 

Moliere has built a play on nearly the same 
foundation, which is not much superior to the 
present. Marston, among other topics of satire, 
has a fling at the pseudo-critics and philosophers 
of his time, who were " full of wise saws and 
modern instances." Thus he freights his Ship of 
Fools : 

" Dondolo, Yes, yes ; but they got a supersedeas ; all of 
them proved themselves either knaves or madmen, and so 
were let go : there's none left now in our ship but a few citi- 
zens that let their wives keep their shop-books, some philo- 
sophers, and a few critics ; one of which critics has lost his 
flesh with fishing at the measure of Plautus' verses ; another 
has vowed to get the consumption of the lungs, or to leave to 
posterity the true orthography and pronunciation of laughing. 

Hercules. But what philosophers ha' ye? 

Dondolo. Oh very strange fellows; one knows nothing, 
dares not aver he lives, goes, sees, feels. 

ISymphadoro. A most insensible philosopher. 



102 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

Dondolo, Another, that there is no present time ; and that 
one man to-day and to-morrow, is not the same man ; so that 
he that yesterday owed money, to-day owes none ; because 
he is not the same man. 

Herod. Would that philosophy hold good in law 1 

Hercules. But why has the Duke thus laboured to have all 
the fools shipped out of his dominions ? 

Dondolo. Marry, because he would play the fool alone 
without any rival." Act IV. 

Moliere has enlarged upon the same topic in 
his Mariage Force, but not with more point or 
effect. Nymphadoro's reasons for devoting him- 
self to the sex generally, and Hercules's descrip- 
tion of the different qualifications of different 
men, will also be found to contain excellent 
specimens, both of style and matter. — The dis- 
guise of Hercules as the Fawn, is assumed vo- 
luntarily, and he is comparatively a calm and 
dispassionate observer of the times. Malevole's 
disguise in the Malcontent has been forced upon 
him by usurpation and injustice, and his in- 
vectives are accordingly more impassioned and 
virulent. His satire does not " like a wild 
goose fly, unclaimed of any man," but has a bitter 
and personal application. Take him in the words 
of the usurping Duke's account of him. 

" This Malevole is one of the most prodigious affections 
that ever conversed with Nature ; a man, or rather a mon- 
ster, more discontent than Lucifer when he was thrust out 
of the presence. His appetite is unsatiable as the grave, as 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 103 

far from any content as from heaven. His highest delight is 
to procure others vexation, and therein he thinks he truly 
serves Heaven ; for 'tis his position, whosoever in this earth can 
be contented, is a slave, and damned ; therefore does he afflict 
all, in that to which they are most affected. The elements 
struggle with him ; his own soul is at variance with herself; 
his speech is halter-worthy at all hours. I like him, faith ; he 
gives good intelligence to my spirit, makes me understand 
those weaknesses which others' flattery palliates. 
Hark ! they sing. 

Enter Malevole, after the Song. 

Pietro Jacomo. See he comes! Now shall you hear the 
extremity of a Malcontent; he is as free as air; he blows 
over every man. And — Sir, whence come you now 1 

Malevole. From the public place of much dissimulation, 
the church. 

Pietro Jacomo. What didst there 1 

Malevole. Talk with a usurer ; take up at interest. 

Pietro Jacomo. I wonder what religion thou art of? 

Malevole. Of a soldier's religion. 

Pietro Jacomo. Aud what dost think makes most infidels 
now? 

Malevole, Sects, sects. I am weary : would I were one of 
the Duke's hounds. 

Pietro Jacomo. But what's the common news abroad? 
Thou dogg'st rumour still. 

Malevole. Common news ? Why, common words are, God 
save ye, fare ye well : common actions, flattery and cozenage : 
common things, women and cuckolds." Act I. Scene 3. 

In reading all this, one is somehow reminded 
perpetually of Mr. Kean's acting : in Shakespear 
we do not often think of him, except in those 



104 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

parts which he constantly acts, and in those one 
cannot forget him. I might observe on the above 
passage, in excuse for some bluntnesses of style, 
that the ideal barrier between names and things 
seems to have been greater then than now. 
Words have become instruments of more im- 
portance than formerly. To mention certain 
actions, is almost to participate in them, as if 
consciousness were the same as guilt. The 
standard of delicacy varies at different periods, 
as it does in different countries, and is not a ge- 
neral test of superiority. The French, who 
pique themselves (and justly, in some particu- 
lars) on their quickness of tact and refinement 
of breeding, say and do things which we, a 
plainer and coarser people, could not think of 
without a blush. What would seem gross allu- 
sions to us at present, were without offence to our 
ancestors, and many things passed for jests with 
them, or matters of indifference, which would 
not now be endured. Refinement of language, 
however, does not keep pace with simplicity of 
manners. The severity of criticism exercised in 
our theatres towards some unfortunate straggling 
phrases in the old comedies, is but an ambiguous 
compliment to the immaculate purity of modern 
times. Marston's style was by no means more 
guarded than that of his contemporaries. He was 
also much more of a free-thinker than Marlowe, 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 105 

and there is a frequent, and not unfavourable 
allusion in his works, to later sceptical opinions. 
— In the play of the Malcontent we meet with 
an occasional mixture of comic gaiety, to relieve 
the more serious and painful business of the 
scene, as in the easy loquacious effrontery of the 
old intriguante Maquerella, and in the ludicrous 
facility with which the idle courtiers avoid or 
seek the notice of Malevole, as he is in or out of 
favour ; but the general tone and import of the 
piece is severe and moral. The plot is some- 
what too intricate and too often changed (like 
the shifting of a scene), so as to break and fritter 
away the interest at the end ; but the part of 
Aurelia, the Duchess of Pietro Jacomo, a disso- 
lute and proud-spirited woman, is the highest 
strain of Marston's pen. The scene in particular, 
in which she receives and exults in the supposed 
news of her husband's death, is nearly unequalled 
in boldness of conception and in the unrestrained 
force of passion, taking away not only the con- 
sciousness of guilt, but overcoming the sense of 
shame *. 

Next to Marston, I must put Chapman, whose 
name is better known as the translator of Homer 
than as a dramatic writer. He is, like Marston, 
a philosophic observer, a didactic reasoner : but 

* See the conclusion of Lecture IV. 



106 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

he has both more gravity in his tragic style, and 
more levity in his comic vein. His Bussy 
d'Ambois, though not without interest or some 
fancy, is rather a collection of apophthegms or 
pointed sayings in the form of a dialogue, than a 
poem or a tragedy. In his verses the oracles 
have not ceased. Every other line is an axiom 
in morals — a libel on mankind, if truth is a libel. 
He is too stately for a wit, in his serious writings 
— too formal for a poet. Bussy d'Ambois is 
founded on a French plot and French manners. 
The character, from which it derives its name, 
is arrogant and ostentatious to an unheard-of 
degree, but full of nobleness and lofty spirit. 
His pride and unmeasured pretensions alone take 
away from his real merit ; and by the quarrels 
and intrigues in which they involve him, bring 
about the catastrophe, which has considerable 
grandeur and imposing effect, in the manner of 
Seneca. Our author aims at the highest things in 
poetry, and tries in vain, wanting imagination 
and passion, to fill up the epic moulds of tragedy 
with sense and reason alone, so that he often runs 
into bombast and turgidity — is extravagant and 
pedantic at one and the same time. From the na- 
ture of the plot, which turns upon a love intrigue, 
much of the philosophy of this piece relates to 
the character of the sex. Milton says, 
" The way of women's will is hard to hit/' 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 107 

But old Chapman professes to have found the 
clue to it, and winds his uncouth way through 
all the labyrinth of love. Its deepest recesses 
" hide nothing: from his view." The close in- 
trigues of court policy, the subtle workings of 
the human soul, move before him like a sea dark, 
deep, and glittering with wrinkles for the smile 
of beauty. Fulke Greville alone could go be- 
yond him in gravity and mystery. The plays of 
the latter ( Mustapha and Alaham ) are abstruse 
as the mysteries of old, and his style inexplicable 
as the riddles of the Sphinx. As an instance of 
his love for the obscure, the marvellous, and im- 
possible, he calls up " the ghost of one of the old 
kings of Ormus," as prologue to one of his trage- 
dies ; a very reverend and inscrutable personage, 
who, we may be sure, blabs no living secrets. 
Chapman, in his other pieces, where he lays 
aside the gravity of the philosopher and poet, 
discovers an unexpected comic vein, distin- 
guished by equal truth of nature and lively good 
humour. I cannot say that this character per- 
vades any one of his entire comedies ; but the 
introductory sketch of Monsieur D'Olive is the 
undoubted prototype of that light, flippant, gay, 
and infinitely delightful class of character, of 
the professed men of wit and pleasure about 
town, which we have in such perfection in Wy- 
cherley and Congreve, such as Sparkish, Wit- 



1QS ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

woud and Petulant, &c. both in the sentiments 
and in the style of writing. For example, take 
the last scene of the first act. 

" Enter D'Olive. 

Rhoderique. What, Monsieur D'Olive, the only admirer of 
wit and good words. 

D'Olive. Morrow, wits : morrow, good wits : my little par- 
cels of wit, I have rods in pickle for you. How dost, Jack ; 
may I call thee, sir, Jack yet ? 

Mugeron. You may, sir; sir's as commendable an addition 
as Jack, for ought I know. 

D'Ol. I know it, Jack, and as common too. 

Rhod. Go to, you may cover ; we have taken notice of 
your embroidered beaver. 

D'OL Look you : by heaven thou'rt one of the maddest 
bitter slaves in Europe : I do but wonder how I made shift to 
love thee all this while. 

Rhod. Go to, what might such a parcel-gilt cover be 
worth? 

Mug. Perhaps more than the whole piece beside. 

D'Ol. Good i'faith, but bitter. Oh, you mad slaves, I 
think you had Satyrs to your sires, yet I must love you, I 
must take pleasure in you, and i'faith tell me, how is't ? live I 
see you do, but howl but how, wits 1 

Rhod. Faith, as you see, like poor younger brothers. 

D'OL By your wits? 

Mug. Nay, not turned poets neither. 

D'Ol. Good in sooth ! but indeed to say truth, time was 
when the sons of the Muses had the privilege to live only by 
their wits, but times are altered, Monopolies are now called in, 
and wit's become a free trade for all sorts to live by : lawyers 
live by wit, and they live worshipfully : soldiers live by wit, 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 109 

and th*7 live honourably : panders live by wit, and they live 
honestly : in a word, there are but few trades but live by wit, 
only bawds and midwives live by women's labours, as fools 
and fiddlers do by making mirth, pages and parasites by mak- 
ing legs, painters and players by making mouths and faces : 
ha, does't well, wits 1 

Rhod. Faith, thou followest a figure in thy jests, as coun- 
try gentlemen follow fashions, when they be worn threadbare. 
D'Ol Well, well, let's leave these wit skirmishes, and say 
when shall we meet 1 

Mug. How think you, are we not met now 1 
D'Ol. Tush, man ! I mean at my chamber, where we may 
take free use of ourselves; that is, drink sack, and talk satire, 
and let our wits run the wild-goose chase over court and 
country. I will have my chamber the rendezvous of all good 
wits, the shop of good words, the mint of good jests, an ordi- 
nary of fine discourse ; critics, essayists, linguists, poets, and 
other professors of that faculty of wit, shall, at certain hours 
i' th' day, resort thither; it shall be a second Sor bonne, where 
all doubts or differences of learning, honour, duellism, criti- 
cism, and poetry, shall be disputed : and how, wits, do ye fol- 
low the court still? 

Rhod. Close at heels, sir ; and I can tell you, you have 
much to answer to your stars, that you do not so too. 
D'OL As why, wits 1 as why 1 

Rhod. Why, sir, the court's as 'twere the stage : and they 
that have a good suit of parts and qualities, ought to press 
thither to grace them, and receive their due merit. 

D'OL Tush, let the court follow me : he that soars too near 
the sun, melts his wings many times ; as I am, I possess my- 
self, I enjoy my liberty, ray learning, my wit : as for wealth 
and honour, let 'em go ; I'll not lose my learning to be a lord, 
nor my wit to be an alderman. 
Mug. Admirable D'Olive ! 



110 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

D'Ol. And what ! you stand gazing at this comet here, and 
admire it, I dare say. 
Rhod. And do not you % 
D'OL Not I, I admire nothing but wit. 
Rhod. But I wonder how she entertains time in that soli- 
tary cell : does she not take tobacco, think you 1 

D'Ol. She does, she does : others make it their physic, she 
makes it her food: her sister and she take it by turn, first one, 
then the other, and Vandome ministers to them both. 

Mug. How sayest thou by that Helen of Greece the 
Countess's sister ? there were a paragon, Monsieur D'Olive, 
to admire and marry too. 
D'Ol. Not for me. 

Rhod. No ] what exceptions lie against the choice 1 
D'OL Tush, tell me not of choice; if I stood affected that 
way, I would choose my wife as men do Valentines, blindfold, 
or draw cuts for them, for so I shall be sure not to be de- 
ceived in choosing ; for take this of me, there's ten times 
more deceit in women than in horse-flesh ; and I say still, that 
a pretty well-pac'd chamber-maid is the only fashion ; if she 
grows full or fulsome, give her but sixpence to buy her a 
hand-basket, and send her the way of all flesh, there's no 
more but so. 

Mug. Tndeed that's the savingest way. 
D'Ol. O me ! what a hell 'tis for a man to be tied to the 
continual charge of a coach, with the appurtenances, horses, 
men, and so forth : and then to have a man's house pestered 
with a whole country of guests, grooms, panders, waiting- 
maids, &c. I careful to please my wife, she careless to dis- 
please me; shrewish if she be honest; intolerable if she 
be wise; imperious as an empress; all she does must be 
law, all she says gospel : oh, what a penance 'tis to endure 
her ! I glad to forbear still, all to keep her loyal, and yet 
perhaps when all's done, my heir shall be like my horse- 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. Ill 

keeper: fie on't ! the very thought of marriage were able to 
cool the hottest liver in France. 

Rhod. Well, I durst venture twice the price of your gilt 
coney's wool, we shall have you change your copy ere a 
twelvemonth's day. 

Mug. We must have you dubb'd o' th' order; there's no 
remedy : you that have, unmarried, done such honourable ser- 
vice in the commonwealth, must needs receive the honour 
due to't in marriage. 

Rhod, That he may do, and never marry. 

D'OL As how, wits ? i'faith as how ? 

Rhod. For if he can prove his father was free o' th' 
order, and that he was his father's son, then, by the laudable 
custom of the city, he may be a cuckold by his father's copy, 
and never serve for't. 

DOl. Ever good i'faith! 

Mug. Nay how can he plead that, when 'tis as well known 
his father died a bachelor 1 

D'OL Bitter, in verity, bitter ! But good still in its kind. 

Rhod. Go to, we must have you follow the lantern of your 
forefathers. 

Mug. His forefathers'? S'body, had he more fathers than 
one? 

D'OL Why, this is right : here's wit canvast out on's coat, 
into's jacket : the string sounds ever well, that rubs not too 
much o' th' frets : I must love your wits, I must take pleasure 
in you. Farewell, good wits : you know my lodging, make 
an errand thither now and then, and save your ordinary ; do, 
wits, do. 

Mug. We shall be troublesome t'ye. 

D'OL O God, sir, you wrong me, to think I can be 
troubled with wit : I love a good wit as I love myself: if you 
need a brace or two of crowns at any time, address but your 
sonnet, it shall be as sufficient as your bond at all times : I 



112 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

carry half a score birds in a cage, shall ever remain at your 
call. Farewell, wits ; farewell, good wits. [Exit. 

Rhod. Farewell the true map of a gull : by heaven he shall 
to th' court! 'tis the perfect model of an impudent upstart; 
the compound of a poet and a lawyer ; he shall sure to th' 
court. 

Mug. Nay, for God's sake, let's have no fools at court. 

Rhod. He shall to't, that's certain. The Duke had a pur- 
pose to dispatch some one or other to the French king, to en- 
treat him to send for the body of his niece, which the me- 
lancholy Earl of St. Anne, her husband, hath kept so long 
unburied, as meaning one grave should entomb himself and her 
together. 

Mug. A very worthy subject for an embassage, as D'Olive 
is for an embassador agent ; and 'tis as suitable to his brain, 
as his parcel-gilt beaver to his fool's head. 

Rhod. Well, it shall go hard, but he shall be employed. 
Oh, 'tis a most accomplished ass ; the mongrel of a gull, and 
a villain : the very essence of his soul is pure villainy ; the 
substance of his brain, foolery : one that believes nothing from 
the stars upward ; a pagan in belief, an epicure beyond be- 
lief; prodigious in lust ; prodigal in wasteful expense ; in ne- 
cessary, most penurious. His wit is to admire and imitate ; 
his grace is to censure and detract ; he shall to th' court, 
i'faith he shall thither : I will shape such employment for him, 
as that he himself shall have no less contentment, in making 
mirth to the whole court, than the Duke and the whole court 
shall have pleasure in enjoying his presence. A knave, if he 
be rich, is fit to make an officer, as a fool, if he be a knave, 
is fit to make an intelligencer. [Exeunt." 

His May-Day is not so good. All Fools, The 
Widow's Tears, and Eastward Hoe, are come- 
dies of great merit, (particularly the last). The 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 113 

first is borrowed a good deal from Terence, and 
the character of Valerio, an accomplished rake, 
who passes with his father for a person of the 
greatest economy and rusticity of manners, is an 
excellent idea, executed with spirit. Eastward 
Hoe was written in conjunction with Ben Jon- 
son and Marston ; and for his share in it, on ac- 
count of some allusions to the Scotch, just after 
the accession of James I. our author, with his 
friends, had nearly lost his ears. Such were the 
notions of poetical justice in those days! The 
behaviour of Ben Jonson's mother on this occa- 
sion is remarkable. " On his release from prison, 
he gave an entertainment to his friends, among 
whom were Camden and Selden. In the midst 
of the entertainment, his mother, more an an- 
tique Roman than a Briton, drank to him, and 
shewed him a paper of poison, which she in- 
tended to have given him in his liquor, having 
first taken a portion of it herself, if the sen- 
tence for his punishment had been executed." 
This play contains the first idea of Hogarth's 
Idle and Industrious Apprentices. 

It remains for me to say something of Webster 
and Deckar. For these two writers I do not 
know how to shew my regard and admiration 
sufficiently. Noble-minded Webster, gentle- 
hearted Deckar, how may I hope to " express ye 



114 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

unblam'd," and repay to your neglected manes 
some part of the debt of gratitude I owe for proud 
and soothing recollections ? I pass by the Ap- 
pius and Virginia of the former, which is how- 
ever a good, sensible, solid tragedy, cast in a 
frame-work of the most approved models, with 
little to blame or praise in it, except the affect- 
ing speech of Appius to Virginia just before he 
kills her; as well as Deckar's Wonder of a 
Kingdom, his Jacomo Gentili, that truly ideal 
character of a magnificent patron, and Old 
Fortunatus and his Wishing-cap, which last has 
the idle garrulity of age, with the freshness and 
gaiety of youth still upon its cheek and in its 
heart. These go into the common catalogue, and 
are lost in the crowd ; but Webster's Vittoria Co- 
rombona I cannot so soon part with ; and old 
honest Deckar's Signior Orlando Friscobaldo I 
shall never forget ! I became only of late ac- 
quainted with this last-mentioned worthy cha- 
racter ; but the bargain between us is, I trust, for 
life. We sometimes regret that we had not 
sooner met with characters like these, that seem 
to raise, revive, and give a new zest to our be- 
ing. Vain the complaint ! We should never 
have known their value, if we had not known 
them always : they are old, very old acquaint- 
ance, or we should not recognise them at first 
sight. We only find in books what is already 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 115 

written within " the red-leaved tables of our 
hearts." The pregnant materials are there; 
" the pangs, the internal pangs are ready ; and 
poor humanity's afflicted will struggling in vain 
with ruthless destiny." But the reading of fine 
poetry may indeed open the bleeding wounds, or 
pour balm and consolation into them, or some- 
times even close them up for ever ! Let any one 
who has never known cruel disappointment, nor 
comfortable hopes, read the first scene between 
Orlando and Hippolito ? in Deckar's play of the 
Honest Whore, and he will see nothing in it. 
But I think few persons will be entirely proof 
against such passages as some of the following. 

" Enter Orlando Friscobaldo., 

Omnes. Signior Friscobaldo. 

Hipolito. Friscobaldo, oh ! pray call] him, and leave me % 
we two have business. 

Carolo, Ho, Signior ! Sigsior Friscobaldo, the Lord Hipo- 
lito. [Exeunt, 

Orlando. My noble Lord ! the Lord Hipolito ! The Duke's 
son ! his brave daughter's brave husband I How does your 
honourM Lordship 1 Does your nobility remamber so poor a 
gentleman as Signior Orlando Friscobaldo? old mad Orlando 1 

Hip. Oh, Sir, our friends! they ought to be unto us as our 
jewels; as dearly valued, being locked up and unseen, as 
when we wear them in our hands. I see, Friscobaldo, age 
hath not command of your blood ; for all time's sickle hath 
gone over you, you are Orlando still. 

Orl. Why, my Lord, are not the fields mown and cut down, 
and stript bare, and yet wear they not pied coats again 1 

i2 



f A * 



116 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

Though my head be like a leek, white, may not my heart be 
like the blade, green ] 

Hip. Scarce can I read the stories on your brow, 
Which age hath writ there : you look youthful still. 

Orl. I eat snakes, my Lord, I eat snakes. My heart shall 
never have a wrinkle in it, so long as I can cry Hem ! with a 
clear voice. * * * * * * 

Hip. You are the happier man, Sir. 

Orl. May not old Friscobaldo, my Lord, be merry now, 
ha 1 I have a little, have all things, have nothing : I have 
no wife, I have no child, have no chick, and why should I 
not be in my jocundare ? 

Hip. Is your wife then departed 1 

Orl. She's an old dweller in those high countries, yet not 
from me: here, she's here; a good couple are seldom parted. 

Hip. You had a daughter, too, Sir, had you not 1 

Orl. Oh, my Lord ! this old tree had one branch, and but 
one branch, growing out of it : it was young, it was fair, it 
was strait : I pruned it daily, drest it carefully, kept it from 
the wind, help'd it to the sun ; yet for all my skill in planting, 
it grew crooked, it bore crabs : I hew'd it down. What's be- 
come of it, I neither know nor care. 

Hip. Then can I tell you what's become of it : that branch 
is wither 'd. 

Orl. So 'twas long ago. 

Hip. Her name, I think, was Bellafront ; she's dead. 

Orl. Ha ! dead ? 

Hip. Yes, what of her was left, not worth the keeping, 
Even in my sight, was thrown into a grave. 

Orl. Dead ! my last and best peace go with her ! I see 
death's a good trencherman ; he can eat coarse homely meat 
as well as the daintiest Is she dead 1 

Hip, She's turn'd to earth. 

Orl. Would she were turned to Heaven. Umh ! Is she 






DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. U7 

dead ? I am glad the world has lost one of his idols : no 
whoremonger will at midnight beat at the doors : in her grave 
sleep all my shame and her own ; and all my sorrows, and all 
her sins. 

Hip. I'm glad you are wax, not marble ; you are made 
Of man's best temper; there are now good hopes 
That all these heaps of ice about your heart, 
By which a father's love was frozen up, 
Are thaw'd in those sweet show'rs fetch'd from your eye : 
We are ne'er like angels till our passions die. 
She is not dead, but lives under worse fate ; 
I think she's poor ; and more to clip her wings, 
Her husband at this hour lies in the jail, 
For killing of a man : to save his blood, 
Join all your force with mine ; mine shall be shown, 
The getting of his life preserves your own. 

Orl. In my daughter you will say ! Does she live then ? 
I am sorry I wasted tears upon a harlot ! but the best is, I 
have a handkerchief to drink them up, soap can wash them 
all out again. Is she poor? 

Hip. Trust me, I think she is. 

Orl. Then she's a right strumpet. I uever knew oue of 
their trade rich two years together ; sieves can hold no water, 
nor harlots hoard up money : taverns, tailors, bawds, panders, 
fiddlers, swaggerers, fools, and knaves, do all wait upon a 
common harlot's trencher ; she is the gallypot to which these 
drones fly : not for love to the pot, but for the sweet sucket 
in it, her money, her money. 

Hip. I almost dare pawn my word, her bosom gives warmth 
to no such snakes ; when did you see her 1 

Orl. Not seventeen summers. 

Hip. Is your hate so old ? 

Orl. Older; it has a white head, and shall never die 'till 
she be buried : her wrongs shall be my bed-fellow. 



118 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

Hip, Work yet his life, since in it lives her fame. 

Orl. No, let him hang, and half her infamy departs out 
of the world; I hate him for her: he taught her first to 
taste poison ; I hate her for herself, because she refused my 
physic. 

Hip. Nay, but Friscobaldo, 

Orl. I detest her, I defy both, she's not mine, she's — 

Hip. Hear her but speak. 

Orl. I love no mermaids, I'll not be caught with a quail- 
pipe. 

Hip. You're now beyoud all reason. Is't dotage to relieve 
your child, being poor 1 

Orl. Tis foolery; relieve her? Were her cold limbs 
stretcht out upon a bier, I would not sell this dirt under my 
nails, to buy her an hour's breath, nor give this hair, unless 
it were to choak her. 

Hip. Fare you well, for I'll trouble you no more. [Exit. 

Orl, And fare you well, Sir, go thy ways ; we have few 
lords of thy making, that love wenches for their honesty. — 
? Las, my girl, art thou poor ? Poverty dwells next door to 
despair, there's but a wall between them : despair is one of 
hell's catchpoles, and lest that devil arrest her, I'll to her ; 
yet she shall not know me : she shall drink of my wealth as 
beggars do of running water, freely ; yet never know from 
what fountain's head it flows. Shall a silly bird pick her own 
breast to nourish her young ones : and can a father see his 
child starve 1 That were hard : the pelican does it, and shall 
notir 

The rest of the character is answerable to 
the beginning. The execution is, throughout, 
as exact as the conception is new and masterly. 
There is the least colour possible used; the 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 119 

pencil drags ; the canvas is almost seen through : 
but then, what precision of outline, what truth 
and purity of tone, what firmness of hand, what 
marking of character ! The words and answers 
all along are so true and pertinent,. that we seem 
to see the gestures, and to hear the tone with 
which they are accompanied. So when Orlando, 
disguised, says to his daughter, " You'll forgive 
me," and she replies, " I am not marble, I for- 
give you ;" or again, when she introduces him to 
her husband, saying simply, " It is my father," 
there needs no stage-direction to supply the re- 
lenting tones of voice or cordial frankness of man- 
ner with which these words are spoken. It is as 
if th are were some fine art to chisel thought, 
and to embody the inmost movements of the 
mind in every-day actions and familiar speech. 
It has been asked, 

" Oh ! who can paint a sun- beam to the blind, 
Or make him feel a shadow with his mind?" 

But this difficulty is here in a manner overcome. 
Simplicity and extravagance of style, homeliness 
and quaintness, tragedy and comedy, interchange- 
ably set their hands and seals to this admirable 
production. We find the simplicity of prose 
with the graces of poetry. The stalk grows out 
of the ground; but the flowers spread their 



120 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

flaunting leaves in the air. The mixture of 
levity in the chief character bespeaks the bit- 
terness from which it seeks relief; it is the idle 
echo of fixed despair, jealous of observation or 
pity. The sarcasm quivers on the lip, while 
the tear stands congealed on the eye-lid. This 
" tough senior," this impracticable old gentle- 
man softens into a little child ; this choke-pear 
melts in the mouth like marmalade. In spite of 
his resolute professions of misanthropy, he 
watches over his daughter with kindly solici- 
tude ; plays the careful housewife ; broods over 
her lifeless hopes ; nurses the decay of her hus- 
band's fortune, as he had supported her tottering 
infancy ; saves the high-flying Matheo from the 
gallows more than once, and is twice a father to 
them. The story has all the romance of private 
life, all the pathos of bearing up against silent 
grief, all the tenderness of concealed affection: — 
there is much sorrow patiently borne, and then 
comes peace. Bellafront, in the two parts of this 
play taken together, is a most interesting cha- 
racter. It is an extreme, and I am afraid almost 
an ideal case. She gives the play its title, turns 
out a true penitent, that is, a practical one, and 
is the model of an exemplary wife. She seems 
intended to establish the converse of the position, 
that a reformed rake makes the best husband, the 
only difficulty in proving which, is, I suppose, 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 121 

to meet with the character. The change of her 
relative position, with regard to Hippolito, who, 
in the first part, in the sanguine enthusiasm of 
youthful generosity, has reclaimed her from vice, 
and in the second part, his own faith and love of 
virtue having been impaired with the progress 
of years, tries in vain to lure her back again to 
her former follies, has an effect the most striking 
and beautiful. The pleadings on both sides, for 
and against female faith and constancy, are ma- 
naged with great polemical skill, assisted by the 
grace and vividness of poetical illustration. As 
an instance of the manner in which Bellafront 
speaks of the miseries of her former situation, 
" and she has felt them knowingly," I might 
give the lines in which she contrasts the diffe- 
rent regard shewn to the modest or the aban- 
doned of her sex. 

" I cannot, seeing she's woven of such bad stuff, 
Set colours on a harlot bad enough. 
Nothing did make me when I lov'd them best, 
To loath them more than this: when in the street 
A fair, young, modest damsel, I did meet ; 
She seem'd to all a dove, when I pass'd by, 
And I to all a raven : every eye 
That followed her, went with a bashful glance ; 
At me each bold and jeering countenance 
Darted forth scorn : to her, as if she had been 
Some tower unvanquished, would they all vail ; 
'Gainst me swoln rumour hoisted every sail. 



122 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

She crown'd with reverend praises, pass'd by them ; 
I, though with face mask'd, could not 'scape the hem 
For, as if heav'n had set strange marks on whores, 
Because they should be pointing-stocks to man, 
Drest up in civilest shape, a courtesan, 
Let her walk saint-like, noteless, and unknown, 
Yet she's betray'd by some trick of her own." 



Perhaps this sort of appeal to matter of fact 
and popular opinion, is more convincing than 
the scholastic subtleties of the Lady in Comus. 
The manner too, in which Infelice, the wife of 
Hippolito, is made acquainted with her hus- 
band's infidelity, is finely dramatic ; and in the 
scene where she convicts him of his injustice by 
taxing herself with incontinence first, and then 
turning his most galling reproaches to her into 
upbraidings against his own conduct, she ac- 
quits herself with infinite spirit and address. 
The contrivance, by which, in the first part, 
after being supposed dead, she is restored to life, 
and married to Hippolito, though perhaps a little 
far-fetched, is affecting and romantic. There 
is uncommon beauty in the Duke her father's 
description of her sudden illness, In reply to 
Infelice's declaration on reviving, " I'm well," 
he says, 

" Thou wert not so e'en now. Sickness' pale hand 
Laid hold on thee, ev'n in the deadst of feasting : 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 123 

And when a cup, crown'd with thy lover's health, 
Had touch'd thy lips, a sensible cold dew 
Stood on thy cheeks, as if that death had wept 
To see such beauty altered." 

Candido, the good-natured man of this play, 
is a character of inconceivable quaintness and 
simplicity. His patience and good-humour can- 
not be disturbed by any thing. The idea (for it 
is nothing but an idea) is a droll one, and is 
well supported. He is not only resigned to in- 
juries, but " turns them," as Falstaff says of 
diseases, " into commodities." He is a patient 
Grizzel out of petticoats, or a Petruchio reversed. 
He is as determined upon winking at affronts, 
and keeping out of scrapes at all events, as the 
hero of the Taming of a Shrew is bent upon 
picking quarrels out of straws, and signalizing 
his manhood without the smallest provocation to 
do so. The sudden turn of the character of Can- 
dido, on his second marriage, is, however, as 
amusing as it is unexpected. 

Matheo, " the high-flying" husband of Bella- 
front, is a masterly portrait, done with equal 
ease and effect. He is a person almost without 
virtue or vice, that is, he is in strictness with- 
out any moral principle at all. He has no ma- 
lice against others, and no concern for himself. 
He is gay, profligate, and unfeeling, governed 
entirely by the impulse of the moment, and ut- 



124 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

terly reckless of consequences. His exclamation, 
when he gets a new suit of velvet, or a lucky run 
on the dice, " Do we not fly high," is an answer 
to all arguments. Punishment or advice has no 
more effect upon him, than upon the moth that 
flies into the candle. He is only to be left to his 
fate. Orlando saves him from it, as we do the 
moth, by snatching it out of the flame, throw- 
ing it out of the window, and shutting down the 
casement upon it! 

Webster would, I think, be a greater dra- 
matic genius than Deckar, if he had the same 
originality ; and perhaps is so, even without it. 
His White Devil and Duchess of Malfy, upon 
the whole perhaps, come the nearest to Shake- 
spear of any thing we have upon record ; the only 
drawback to them, the only shade of imputation 
that can be thrown upon them, " by which they 
lose some colour," is, that they are too like 
Shakespear, and often direct imitations of him, 
both in general conception and individual expres- 
sion. So far, there is nobody else whom it 
would be either so difficult or so desirable to imi- 
tate; but it would have been still better, if all 
his characters had been entirely his own, had 
stood out as much from others, resting only 
on their own naked merits, as that of the honest 
Hidalgo, on whose praises I have dwelt so 
much above. Deckar has, I think, more truth 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 125 

of character,, more instinctive depth of sentiment, 
more of the unconscious simplicity of nature ; but 
he does not, out of his own stores, clothe his 
subject with the same richness of imagination, 
or the same glowing colours of language. Deckar 
excels in giving expression to certain habitual, 
deeply-rooted feelings, which remain pretty much 
the same in all circumstances, the simple un- 
compounded elements of nature and passion : — 
Webster gives more scope to their various com- 
binations and changeable aspects, brings them 
into dramatic play by contrast and comparison, 
flings them into a state of fusion by a kindled 
fancy, makes them describe a wider arc of oscil- 
lation from the impulse of unbridled passion, and 
carries both terror and pity to a more painful 
and sometimes unwarrantable excess. Deckar is 
contented with the historic picture of suffering ; 
Webster goes on to suggest horrible imagin- 
ings. The pathos of the one tells home and for 
itself; the other adorns his sentiments with some 
image of tender or awful beauty. In a word, 
Deckar is more like Chaucer or Boccaccio ; as 
Webster's mind appears to have been cast more 
in the mould of Shakespear's, as well naturally as 
from studious emulation. The Bellafront and 
Vittoria Corombona of these two excellent 
writers, shew their different powers and turn of 
mind. The one is all softness ; the other " all 



! 



126 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

fire and air," The faithful wife of Matheo sits 
at home drooping, " like the female dove, the 
whilst her golden couplets are disclosed ;" while 
the insulted and persecuted Vittoria darts killing 
scorn and pernicious beauty at her enemies. 
This White Devil (as she is called ) is made fair 
as the leprosy, dazzling as the lightning. She is 
dressed like a bride in her wrongs and her re- 
venge. In the trial-scene in particular, her 
sudden indignant answers to the questions that 
are asked her, startle the hearers. Nothing can 
be imagined finer than the whole conduct and 
conception of this scene, than her scorn of her 
accusers and of herself. The sincerity of her 
sense of guilt triumphs over the hypocrisy of 
their affected and official contempt for it. In 
answer to the charge of having received letters 
from the Duke of Brachiano, she says, 

" Grant I was tempted : 

Condemn you me, for that the Duke did love me 1 
So may you blame some fair and chrystal river, 
For that some melancholic distracted man 
Hath drown'd himself in 't." 

And again, when charged with being acces- 
sary to her husband's death, and shewing no 
concern for it — 

" She comes not like a widow; she comes arm'd 
With scorn and impudence. Is this a mourning habit ?" 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 127 

she coolly replies, 

" Had I foreknown his death as you suggest, 
I would have bespoke my mourning." 

In the closing scene with her cold-blooded 
assassins, Lodovico and Gasparo, she speaks 
daggers, and might almost be supposed to exor- 
cise the murdering fiend out of these true devils. 
Every word probes to the quick. The whole 
scene is the sublime of contempt and indiffe- 
rence. 

" Vittoria. If Florence be i'uY Court, he would not kill me. 

Gasparo, Fool ! princes give rewards with their own hands, 
But death or punishment by the hands of others. 

Lodovico (To Flamineo). Sirrah, you once did strike me ; 
I'll strike you 
Unto the centre. 

Flam, Thou'lt do it like a hangman, a base hangman, 
Not like a noble fellow ; for thou see'st 
I cannot strike again. 

Lod. Dost laugh] 

Flam, Would'st have me die, as I was born, in whining ! 

Gasp. Recommend yourself to Heaven. 

Flam. No, I will carry mine own commendations thither. 

Lod. O ! could I kill you forty times a-day, 
And use 't four year together, 'twere too little : 
Nought grieves, but that you are too few to feed 
The famine of our vengeance. What do'st think on 1 

Flam. Nothing ; of nothing : leave thy idle questions — 
I am i' th' way to study a long silence. 
To prate were idle : I remember nothing ; 



l$8 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

There's nothing of so infinite vexation 
As man's own thoughts. 

Lod. O thou glorious strumpet ! 
Could I divide thy breath from this pure air 
When 't leaves thy body, I would suck it up, 
And breathe 't upon some dunghill. 

Vit. Cor. You my death's man ! 
Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough ; 
Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman : 
If thou be, do thy office in right form ; 
Fall down upon thy knees, and ask forgiveness. 

Lod. O ! thou hast been a most prodigious comet ; 
But I'll cut off your train : kill the Moor first. 

Vit. Cor. You shall not kill her first ; behold my breast; 
I will be waited on in death : my servant 
Shall never go before me. 

Gasp. Are you so brave ? 

Vit. Cor. Yes, I shall welcome death 
As princes do some great embassadours ; 
I'll meet thy weapon half way. 

Lod. Thou dost not tremble ! 
Methinks, fear should dissolve thee into air. 

Vit. Cor. O, thou art deceiv'd, I am too true a woman ! 
Conceit can never kill me. I'll tell thee what, 
I will not in my death shed one base tear ; 
Or if look pale, for want of blood, not fear. 

Gasp. (ToZanche). Thou art my task, black fury. 

Zanche. I have blood 
As red as either of theirs ! Wilt drink some ? 
'Tis good for the falling-sickness : I am proud 
Death cannot alter my complexion, 
For I shall ne'er look pale. 

Lod. Strike, strike, 
With a joint motion. 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 129 

Vit. Cor. Twas a manly blow : 
The next thou giv'st, murther some sucking infant, 
And then thou wilt be famous." 

Such are some of the terrible graces of the ob- 
scure, forgotten Webster. There are other parts 
of this play of a less violent, more subdued, and, 
if it were possible, even deeper character ; such 
is the declaration of divorce pronounced by 
Brachiano on his wife : 

" Your hand I'll kiss : 

This is the latest ceremony of my love ; 
I'll never more live with you," &c. 

which is in the manner of, and equal to, Deckar's 
finest things : — and others, in a quite different 
style of fanciful poetry and bewildered passion ; 
such as the lamentation of Cornelia, his mother, 
for the death of Marcello, and the parting scene 
of Brachiano ; which would be as fine as Shake- 
spear, if they were not in a great measure bor- 
rowed from his inexhaustible store. In the for- 
mer, after Flamineo has stabbed his brother, 
and Hortensio comes in, Cornelia exclaims, 

" Alas ! he is not dead ; he's in a trance. 
"Why, here's nobody shall get any thing by his death : 
Let me call him again, for God's sake. 

Hor. I would you were deceiv'd. 

Corn. O you abuse me, you abuse me, you abuse me ! How- 
many have gone away thus, for want of 'tendance ? Rear up's 
head, rear up's head ; his bleeding inward will kill him. 

K 



130 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

Hor. You see he is departed. 

Corn. Let me come to him ; give me him as he is. If he be 
turn'd to earth, let me but give him one hearty kiss, and you 
shall put us both into one coffin. Fetch a looking-glass : see 
if his breath will not stain it; or pull out some feathers from 
my pillow, and lay them to his lips. Will you lose him for a 
little pains-taking 1 

Hor. Your kindest office is to pray for him. 

Corn, Alas ! I would not pray for him yet. He may live 
to lay me i' th' ground, and pray for me, if you'll let me come 
to him. 

Enter Brachiano, all armed, save the Bearer, with Flamineo 
and Page. 

Brack. Was this your handy-work 1 
Flam. It was my misfortune. 

Corn. He lies, he lies ; he did not kill him. These have 
killed him, that would not let him be better looked to. 
Brack. Have comfort, my griev'd mother. 
Corn. O, you screech-owl ! 
Hor. Forbear, good madam. 
Corn. Let me go, let me go. 

(She runs to Flamineo with her knife drawn, and 
corning to him, lets it fall). 

The God of Heav'n forgive thee ! Dost not wonder 
I pray for theet I'll tell thee what's the reason : 
I have scarce breath to number twenty minutes ; 
I'd not spend that in cursing. Fare thee well ! 
Half of thyself lies there ; and may'st thou live 
To fill an hour-glass with his mouldered ashes, 
To tell how thou should'st spend the time to come 
In blest repentance. 

Brack. Mother, pray tell me/' 
How came he by his death 1 What was the quarrel ? 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 131 

Corn. Indeed, my younger boy presum'd too much 
Upon his manhood, gave him bitter words, 
Drew his sword first ; and so, I know not how, 
For I was out of my wits, he fell with's head 
Just in my bosom. 

Page. This is not true, madam. 

Corn. I pr'ythee, peace. 
One arrow's graz'd already : it were vain 
To lose this ; for that will ne'er be found again." 

This is a good deal borrowed from Lear ; but 
the inmost folds of the human heart, the sudden 
turns and windings of the fondest affection, are 
also laid open with so masterly and original a 
hand, that it seems to prove the occasional imi- 
tations as unnecessary as they are evident. The 
scene where the Duke discovers that he is poi- 
soned, is as follows, and equally fine. 

* Brack. Oh ! I am gone already. The infection 
Flies to the brain and heart. O, thou strong heart, 
There's such a covenant 'tween the world and thee, 
They're loth to part. 

Giovanni. O my most lov'd father ! 

Brack. Remove the boy away : 
Where's this good woman ? Had I infinite worlds, 
They were too little for thee. Must I leave thee 1 

(To Vittoria). 
What say you, screech-owls. (To the Physicians) Is the 
venom mortal 1 

Pky. Most deadly. 

Brack. Most corrupted politic hangman ! 
You kill without book ; but your art to save 

k2 



132 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

Fails you as oft as great men's needy friends : 

I that have given life to offending slaves, 

And wretched murderers, have I not power 

To lengthen mine own a twelve-month ? 

Do not kiss me, for I shall poison thee. 

This unction is sent from the great Duke of Florence. 

Francesco de Medici (in disguise). Sir, be of comfort. 

Brack. O thou soft natural death ! that art joint-twin 
To sweetest slumber ! — no rough-bearded comet 
Stares on thy mild departure : the dull owl 
Beats not against thy casement : the hoarse wolf 
Scents not thy carrion. Pity winds thy corse, 
Whilst horror waits on princes. 

Vit* Cor. I am lost for ever. 

Brack. How miserable a thing it is to die 
'Mongst women howling ! What are those 1 

Flam. Fransiscans. 
They have brought the extreme unction. 

Brack. On pain of death let no man name death to me 
It is a word most infinitely terrible. 
Withdraw into our cabinet." 



The deception practised upon him by Lodo- 
vico and Gasparo, who offer him the sacrament 
in the disguise of Monks, and then discover 
themselves to damn him, is truly diabolical and 
ghastly. But the genius that suggested it was 
as profound as it was lofty. When they are at 
first introduced, Flamineo says, 

" See, see how firmly he doth fix his eye 
Upon the crucifix." 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 133 

To which Vittoria answers, 

" Oh, hold it constant : 
It settles his wild spirits ; and so his eyes 
Melt into tears." 

The Duchess of Malfy is not, in my judg- 
ment, quite so spirited or effectual a performance 
as the White Devil. But it is distinguished by 
the same kind of beauties, clad in the same ter- 
rors. I do not know but the occasional strokes 
of passion are even profounder and more Shake- 
spearian ; but the story is more laboured, and 
the horror is accumulated to an overpowering 
and insupportable height. However appalling to 
the imagination and finely done, the scenes of 
the madhouse to which the Duchess is con- 
demned with a view to unsettle her reason, and 
the interview between her and her brother, 
where he gives her the supposed dead hand of 
her husband, exceed, to my thinking, the just 
bounds of poetry and of tragedy. At least, the 
merit is of a kind, which, however great, we 
wish to be rare. A series of such exhibitions 
obtruded upon the senses or the imagination 
must tend to stupefy and harden, rather than to 
exalt the fancy or meliorate the heart. I speak 
this under correction ; but I hope the objection 
is a venial common-place. In a different style 



134 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

altogether are the directions she gives about her 
children in her last struggles ; 

" I prythee, look thou giv'st my little boy 
Some syrop for his cold, and let the girl 
Say her pray'rs ere she sleep. Now what death you please — " 

and her last word, " Mercy," which she recovers 
just strength enough to pronounce ; her proud 
answer to her tormentors, who taunt her with 
her degradation and misery — " But I am Duchess 
of Malfy still*" — as if the heart rose up, like a ser- 
pent coiled, to resent the indignities put upon it, 
and being struck at, struck again ; and the stag- 
gering reflection her brother makes on her death, 
" Cover her face : my eyes dazzle : she died 
young !" Bosola replies : 

" I think not so ; her infelicity 
Seem'd to have years too many. 

Ferdinand, She and I were twins : 
And should I die this instant, I had liv'd 
Her time to a minute." 

This is not the bandying of idle words and 

* "Am I not thy Duchess? 

Bosola. Thou art some great woman, sure ; *br riot begins 
to sit on thy forehead (clad in gray hairs) twenty years sooner 
than on a merry milkmaid's. Thou sleep'st. worse than if a 
mouse should be forced to take up his lodging in a cat's ear : 
a little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee, 
would cry out, as if thou wert the more unquiet bed-fellow. 

Duck. I am Duchess of Malfy still." 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 135 

rhetorical common-places, but the writhing and 
conflict, and the sublime colloquy of man's na- 
ture with itself! 

The Revengers Tragedy, by Cyril Tourneur, 
is the only other drama equal to these and to 
Shakespear, in " the dazzling fence of impas- 
sioned argument," in pregnant illustration, and 
in those profound reaches of thought, which 
lay open the soul of feeling. The play, on the 
whole, does not answer to the expectations it 
excites ; but the appeals of Castiza to her mo- 
ther, who endeavours to corrupt her virtuous re- 
solutions, " Mother, come from that poisonous 
woman there," with others of the like kind, are of 
as high and abstracted an essence of poetry, as 
any of those above mentioned. 

In short, the great characteristic of the elder 
dramatic writers is, that there is nothing thea- 
trical about them. In reading them, you only 
think how the persons, into whose mouths cer- 
tain sentiments are put, would have spoken or 
looked : in reading Dryden and others of that 
school, you onl^ think, as the authors them- 
selves seem to have done, how they would be 
ranted on the stage by some buskined hero or 
tragedy-queen. In this respect, indeed, some of 
his more obscure contemporaries have the ad- 






136 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, 

vantage over Shakespear himself, inasmuch as 
we have never seen their works represented 
on the stage ; and there is no stage-trick to re- 
mind us of it. The characters of their heroes 
have not been cut down to lit into the prompt- 
book, nor have we ever seen their names flaring 
in the play-bills in small or large capitals. — I do 
not mean to speak disrespectfully of the stage ; 
but I think higher still of nature, and next to that, 
of books. They are the nearest to our thoughts : 
they wind into the heart ; the poet's verse slides 
into the current of our blood. We read them when 
young, we remember them when old. We read 
there of what has happened to others ; we feel 
that it has happened to ourselves. They are to be 
had every where cheap and good. We breathe but 
the air of books : we owe every thing to their 
authors, on this side barbarism ; and we pay 
them easily with contempt, while living, and 
with an epitaph, when dead ! Michael Angelo is 
beyond the Alps ; Mrs. Siddons has left the 
stage and us to mourn her loss. Were it not so. 
there are neither picture-galleries nor theatres- 
royal on Salisbury-plain, where I write this ; 
but here, even here, with a few old authors, I 
can manage to get through the summer or the 
winter months, without ever knowing what it is 
to feel ennui. They sit with me at breakfast; 
they walk out with me before dinner. After a 



DECKAR, AND WEBSTER. 137 

long walk through unfrequented tracks, after 
starting; the hare from the fern, or hearing the 
wing of the raven rustling above my head, or 
being greeted by the woodman's " stern good- 
night," as he strikes into his narrow homeward 
path, I can " take mine ease at mine inn," beside 
the blazing hearth, and shake hands with Signor 
Orlando Friscobaldo, as the oldest acquaintance 
I have. Ben Jonson, learned Chapman, Mas- 
ter Webster, and Master Hey wood, are there ; 
and seated round, discourse the silent hours 
away. Shakespear is there himself, not in Gib- 
ber's manager's coat. Spenser is hardly yet re- 
turned from a ramble through the woods, or is 
concealed behind a group of nymphs, fawns, and 
satyrs. Milton lies on the table, as on an altar, 
never taken up or laid down without reverence. 
Lyly's Endymion sleeps with the moon, that 
shines in at the window ; and a breath of wind 
stirring at a distance seems a sigh from the tree 
under which he grew old. Faustus disputes in 
one corner of the room with fiendish faces, and 
reasons of divine astrology. Bellafront soothes 
Matheo, Vittoria triumphs over her judges, and 
old Chapman repeats one of the hymns of Ho- 
mer, in his own fine translation ! I should have 
no objection to pass my life in this manner out 
of the world, not thinking of it, nor it of me ; 
neither abused by my enemies, nor defended by 



158 ON MARSTON, CHAPMAN, &c. 

my friends; careless of the future, but sometimes 
dreaming of the past, which might as well be 
forgotten ! Mr. Wordsworth has expressed this 
sentiment well (perhaps I have borrowed it from 
him) — 

" Books, dreams, are both a world ; and books, we know, 
Are a substantial world, both pure and good, 
Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, 

ur pastime and our happiness may grow. 

* * ****** 

Two let me mention dearer than the rest, 
The gentle lady wedded to the Moor, 
And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb. 

Blessings be with them and eternal praise, 
The poets, who on earth have made us heirs 
Of truth and pure delight in deathless lays. 
Oh, might my name be numbered among theirs, 
Then gladly would I end my mortal days !" 

1 have no sort of pretension to join in the con- 
cluding wish of the last stanza ; but I trust the 
writer feels that this aspiration of his early and 
highest ambition is already not unfulfilled ! 



LECTURE IV. 



ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, BEN JONSON, 
FORD, AND MASSINGER. 

Beaumont and Fletcher, with all their 
prodigious merits, appear to me the first writers 
who in some measure departed from the genuine 
tragic style of the age of Shakespear. They 
thought less of their subject, and more of them- 
selves, than some others. They had a great and 
unquestioned command over the stores both of 
fancy and passion ; but they availed themselves 
too often of common-place extravagances and 
theatrical trick. Men at first produce effect by 
studying nature, and afterwards they look at 
nature only to produce effect. It is the same in the 
history of other arts, and of other periods of lite- 
rature. With respect to most of the writers of this 
age, their subject was their master. Shakespear 
was alone, as I have said before, master of his 
subject ; but Beaumont and Fletcher were the 
first who made a play-thing of it, or a conveni- 
ent vehicle for the display of their own powers. 
The example of preceding or contemporary writers 



140 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

had given them facility; the frequency of dra- 
matic exhibition had advanced the popular taste ; 
and this facility of production, and the necessity 
for appealing to popular applause, tended to 
vitiate their own taste, and to make them willing 
to pamper that of the public for novelty and ex- 
traordinary effect. There wants something of 
the sincerity and modesty of the older writers. 
They do not wait nature's time, or work out her 
materials patiently and faithfully, but try to an- 
ticipate her, and so far defeat themselves. They 
would have a catastrophe in every scene; so that 
you have none at last : they would raise admira- 
tion to its height in every line ; so that the im- 
pression of the whole is comparatively loose and 
desultory. They pitch the characters at first 
in too high a key, and exhaust themselves by 
the eagerness and impatience of their efforts. 
We find all the prodigality of youth, the confi- 
dence inspired by success, an enthusiasm bor- 
dering on extravagance, richness running riot, 
beauty dissolving in its own sweetness. They 
are like heirs just come to their estates, like 
lovers in the honey-moon. In the economy of 
nature's gifts, they " misuse the bounteous Pan, 
and thank the Gods amiss." Their productions 
shoot up in haste, but bear the marks of preco- 
sity and premature decay. Or they are two 
goodly trees, the stateliest of the forest, crowned 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 141 

with blossoms, and with the verdure springing 
at their feet ; but they do not strike their roots 
far enough into the ground, and the fruit can 
hardly ripen for the flowers ! 

It cannot be denied that they are lyrical and 
descriptive poets of the first order ; every page of 
their writings is Siflorilegium : they are dramatic 
poets of the second class, in point of knowledge, 
variety, vivacity, and effect; there is hardly a 
passion, character, or situation, which they have 
not touched in their devious range, and what- 
ever they touched, they adorned with some new 
grace or striking feature: they are masters of 
style and versification in almost every variety of 
melting modulation or sounding pomp, of which 
they are capable : in comic wit and spirit, they 
are scarcely surpassed by any writers of any 
age. There they are in their element, " like 
eagles newly baited ;" but I speak rather of their 
serious poetry ; — and this, I apprehend, with all 
its richness, sweetness, loftiness, and grace, 
wants something — stimulates more than it gra- 
tifies, and leaves the mind in a certain sense 
exhausted and unsatisfied. Their fault is a too 
ostentatious and indiscriminate display of power. 
Every thing seems in a state of fermentation and 
effervescence, and not to have settled and found 
its centre in their minds. The ornaments, 



142 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

through neglect or abundance, do not always ap- 
pear sufficiently appropriate : there is evidently a 
rich wardrobe of words and images, to set off 
any sentiments that occur, but not equal felicity 
in the choice of the sentiments to be expressed ; 
the characters in general do not take a substan- 
tial form, or excite a growing interest, or leave 
a permanent impression ; the passion does not 
accumulate by the force of time, of circumstances, 
and habit, but wastes itself in the first ebulli- 
tions of surprise and novelty. 

Besides these more critical objections, there 
is a too frequent mixture of voluptuous softness 
or effeminacy of character with horror in the 
subjects, a conscious weakness (I can hardly 
think it wantonness) of moral constitution strug- 
gling with wilful and violent situations, like the 
tender wings of the moth, attracted to the flame 
that dazzles and consumes it. In the hey-day of 
their youthful ardour, and the intoxication of 
their animal spirits, they take a perverse delight 
in tearing up some rooted sentiment, to make a 
mawkish lamentation over it; and fondly and 
gratuitously cast the seeds of crimes into forbid- 
den grounds, to see how they will shoot up and 
vegetate into luxuriance, to catch the eye of 
fancy. They are not safe teachers of morality : 
they tamper with it, like an experiment tried in 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 143 

corpore vili; and seem to regard the decompo- 
sition of the common affections, and the dissolu- 
tion of the strict bonds of society, as an agreeable 
study and a careless pastime. The tone of Shake- 
spear's writings is manly and bracing ; theirs is 
at once insipid and meretricious, in the com- 
parison. Shakespear never disturbs the grounds 
of moral principle; but leaves his characters 
(after doing them heaped justice on all sides) 
to be judged of by our common sense and natural 
feeling. Beaumont and Fletcher constantly 
bring in equivocal sentiments and characters, as 
if to set them up to be debated by sophistical 
casuistry, or varnished over with the colours of 
poetical ingenuity. Or Shakespear may be said 
to " cast the diseases of the mind, only to re- 
store it to a sound and pristine health :" the dra- 
matic paradoxes of Beaumont and Fletcher are, 
to all appearance, tinctured with an infusion of 
personal vanity and laxity of principle. I do 
not say that this was the character of the men ; 
but it strikes me as the character of their minds. 
The two things are very distinct. The greatest 
purists (hypocrisy apart) are often free-livers; 
and some of the most unguarded professors of a 
general license of behaviour, have been the last 
persons to take the benefit of their own doctrine, 
from which they reap nothing, but the obloquy 
and the pleasure of startling their " wonder- 



144 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

wounded" hearers. There is a division of labour, 
even in vice. Some persons addict themselves 
to the speculation only, others to the practice. 
The peccant humours of the body or the mind 
break out in different ways. One man sows his 
wild oats in his neighbour's field: another on 
Mount Parnassus ; from whence, borne on the 
breath of fame, they may hope to spread and 
fructify to distant times and regions. Of the 
latter class were our poets, who, I believe, led 
unexceptionable lives, and only indulged their 
imaginations in occasional unwarrantable liber- 
ties with the Muses. What makes them more 
inexcusable, and confirms this charge against 
them, is, that they are always abusing " wanton 
poets," as if willing to shift suspicion from them- 
selves. 

Beaumont and Fletcher were the first also 
who laid the foundation of the artificial dic- 
tion and tinselled pomp of the next genera- 
tion of poets, by aiming at a profusion of am- 
bitious ornaments, and by translating the com- 
monest circumstances into the language of me- 
taphor and passion. It is this misplaced and in* 
ordinate craving after striking effect and con- 
tinual excitement that had at one time rendered 
our poetry the most vapid of all things, by not 
leaving the moulds of poetic diction to be filled 



** 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 145 

up by the overflowings of nature and passion, 
but by swelling out ordinary and unmeaning 
topics to certain preconceived and indispensable 
standards of poetical elevation and grandeur. — I 
shall endeavour to confirm this praise, mixed 
with unwilling blame, by remarking on a few 
of their principal tragedies. If I have done them 
injustice, the resplendent passages I have to 
quote will set every thing to rights. 

The Maid's Tragedy is one of the poorest. 
The nature of the distress is of the most disa- 
greeable and repulsive kind ; and not the less so, 
because it is entirely improbable and uncalled- 
for. There is no sort of reason, or no sufficient 
reason to the reader's mind, why the king should 
marry off his mistress to one of his courtiers, 
why he should pitch upon the worthiest for this 
purpose, why he should, by such a choice, break 
off Amintor's match with the sister of another 
principal support of his throne (whose death is 
the consequence) why he should insist on the 
inviolable fidelity of his former mistress to him 
after she is married, and why her husband should 
thus inevitably be made acquainted with his 
dishonour, and roused to madness and revenge, 
except the mere love of mischief, and gratui- 
tous delight in torturing the feelings of others, 
and tempting one's own fate. The character of 

L 



146 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

Evadne, however, her naked, unblushing impu- 
dence, the mixture of folly with vice, her utter 
insensibility to any motive but her own pride 
and inclination, her heroic superiority to any 
signs of shame or scruples of conscience from 
a recollection of what is due to herself or 
others, are well described ; and the lady is true 
to herself in her repentance, which is owing to 
nothing but the accidental impulse and whim of 
the moment. The deliberate voluntary disre- 
gard of all moral ties and all pretence to virtue, 
in the structure of the fable, is nearly unaccount- 
able. Amintor (who is meant to be the hero of 
the piece) is a feeble, irresolute character : his 
slavish, recanting loyalty to his prince, who has 
betrayed and dishonoured him, is of a piece with 
the tyranny and insolence of which he is made 
the sport ; and even his tardy revenge is snatched 
from his hands, and he kills his former betrothed 
and beloved mistress, instead of executing ven- 
geance on the man who has destroyed his peace 
of mind and unsettled her intellects. The king, 
however, meets his fate from the penitent fury 
of Evadne ; and on this account, the Maid's 
Tragedy was forbidden to be acted in the reign 
of Charles II. as countenancing the doctrine of 
regicide. Aspatia is a beautiful sketch of re- 
signed and heart-broken melancholy ; and Ca- 
lianax, a blunt, satirical courtier, is a character 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 147 

of much humour and novelty. There are strik- 
ing passages here and there, but fewer than in 
almost any of their plays. Amintor's speech to 
Evadne, when she makes confession of her un- 
looked-for remorse, is, I think, the finest. 

" Do not mock me : 

Though I am tame, and bred up with my wrongs, 
Which are my foster-brothers, I may leap, 
Like a hand-wolf, into my natural wildness, 
And do an outrage. Prithee, do not mock me I" 

King and No King, which is on a strangely 
chosen subject as strangely treated, is very su- 
perior in power and effect. There is an unex- 
pected reservation in the plot, which, in some 
measure, relieves the painfulness of the impres- 
sion. Arbaces is painted in gorgeous, but not 
alluring colours. His vain-glorious pretensions 
and impatience of contradiction are admirably 
displayed, and are so managed as to produce an 
involuntary comic effect to temper the lofty tone 
of tragedy, particularly in the scenes in which 
he affects to treat his vanquished enemy w T ith 
such condescending kindness ; and perhaps this 
display of upstart pride was meant by the authors 
as an oblique satire on his low origin, which is 
afterwards discovered. His pride of self-will 
and fierce impetuosity, are the same in war and 
in love. The haughty voluptuousness and pam- 

l2 



148 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

pered effeminacy of his character admit neither 
respect for his misfortunes, nor pity for his errors. 
His ambition is a fever in the blood; and his 
love is a sudden transport of ungovernable ca- 
price that brooks no restraint, and is intoxicated 
with the lust of power, even in the lap of plea- 
sure, and the sanctuary of the affections. The 
passion of Panthea is, as it were, a reflection 
from, and lighted at the shrine of her lover's fla- 
grant vanity. In the elevation of his rank, and 
in the consciousness of his personal accomplish- 
ments, he seems firmly persuaded (and by sym- 
pathy to persuade others) that there is nothing 
in the world which can be an object of liking or 
admiration but himself. The first birth and de- 
claration of this perverted sentiment to himself, 
when he meets with Panthea after his return 
from conquest, fostered by his presumptuous in- 
fatuation and the heat of his inflammable pas- 
sions, and the fierce and lordly tone in which he 
repels the suggestion of the natural obstacles to 
his sudden phrenzy, are in Beaumont and 
Fletcher's most daring manner : but the rest 
is not equal. What may be called the love- 
scenes are equally gross and common-place; 
and instead of any thing like delicacy or a 
struggle of different feelings, have all the inde- 
cency and familiarity of a brothel. Bessus, a 
comic character in this play, is a swagger- 



BEN JONSON, FOIID, AND MASSINGER. 149 

ing coward, something between Parolles and 
FalstafT. 



The False One is an indirect imitation of An- 
tony and Cleopatra. We have Septimius for 
GEnobarbas and Caesar for Antony. Cleopatra 
herself is represented in her girlish state, but she 
is made divine in 

" Youth that opens like perpetual spring," 

and promises the rich harvest of love and plea- 
sure that succeeds it. Her first presenting her- 
self before Caesar, when she is brought in by 
Sceva, and the impression she makes upon him, 
like a vision dropt from the clouds, or 

" Like some celestial sweetness, the treasure of soft love," 

are exquisitely conceived. Photinus is an accom- 
plished villain, well-read in crooked policy and 
quirks of state ; and the description of Pompey 
has a solemnity and grandeur worthy of his un- 
fortunate end. Septimius says, bringing in his 
lifeless head, 

" Tis here, 'tis done! Behold, you fearful viewers, 
Shake, and behold the model of the world here, 
The pride and strength! Look, look again, 'tis finished ! 
That that whole armies, nay, whole nations, 
Many and mighty kings, have been struck blind at, 



150 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

And fled before, wing'd with their fear and terrors, 
That steel War waited on, and Fortune courted, 
That high-plumM Honour built up for her own ; 
Behold that mightiness, behold that fierceness, 
Behold that child of war, with all his glories, 
By this poor hand made breathless !" 

And again Caesar says of him, who was his 
mortal enemy (it was not held the fashion in 
those days, nor will it be held so in time to 
come, to lampoon those whom you have van- 
quished) — 

■ ■ " Oh thou conqueror, 
Thou glory of the world once, now the pity, 
Thou awe of nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus 1 
What poor fate followed thee, and plucked thee on 
To trust thy sacred life to an Egyptian 1 
The life and light of Rome to a blind stranger, 
That honourable war ne'er taught a nobleness, 
Nor worthy circumstance shew'd what a man was? 
That never heard thy name sung but in banquets, 
And loose lascivious pleasures ? to a boy, 
That had no faith to comprehend thy greatness, 
No study of thy life to know thy goodness 1 
Egyptians, do you think your highest pyramids, 
Built to outdure the sun, as you suppose, 
Where your unworthy kings lie raked in ashes, 
Are monuments fit for him! No, brood of Nilus, 
Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven ; 
No pyramids set off his memories, 
But the eternal substance of his greatness, 
To which I leave him." 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 151 

It is something worth living for, to write or 
even read such poetry as this is, or to know that 
it has been written, or that there have been sub- 
jects on which to write it ! — This, of all Beau- 
mont and Fletcher's plays, comes the nearest in 
style and manner to Shakespear, not excepting 
the first act of the Two Noble Kinsmen, which 
has been sometimes attributed to him. 

The Faithful Shepherdess by Fletcher alone, 
is " a perpetual feast of nectar 'd sweets, where 
no crude surfeit reigns." The author has in it 
given a loose to his fancy, and his fancy w r as his 
most delightful and genial quality, where, to use 
his own words, 

" He takes most ease, and grows ambitious 
Thro' his own wanton fire and pride delicious." 

The songs and lyrical descriptions throughout 
are luxuriant and delicate in a high degree. He 
came near to Spenser in a certain tender and 
voluptuous sense of natural beauty ; he came near 
to Shakespear in the playful and fantastic ex- 
pression of it. The whole composition is an ex- 
quisite union of dramatic and pastoral poetry ; 
where the local descriptions receive a tincture 
from the sentiments and purposes of the speaker, 
and each character, cradled in the lap of nature, 



J 52 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

paints " her virgin fancies wild" with romantic 
grace and classic elegance. 

The place and its employments are thus de- 
scribed by Chloe to Thenot : 

" Here be woods as green 



As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet 
As where smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet 
Face of the curled stream, with flow'rs as many 
As the young spring gives, and as choice as any ; 
Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells, 
Arbours o'ergrown with woodbine; caves, and dells; 
Chuse where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing, 
Or gather rushes, to make many a ring 
For thy long fingers ; tell thee tales of love, 
How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove, 
First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes 
She took eternal fire that never dies ; 
How she conveyed him softly in a sleep, 
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep 
Head of old Latinos, where she stoops each night, 
Gilding the mountain with her brother's light, 
To kiss her sweetest.'' 

There are few things that can surpass in 
truth and beauty of allegorical description, the 
invocation of Amaryllis to the God of Shep- 
herds, Pan, to save her from the violence of the 
Sullen Shepherd, for Syrinx' sake : 

" For her dear sake, 



That loves the rivers' brinks, and still doth shake 
In cold remembrance of thy quick pursuit !" 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGEIl. 153 

Or again, the friendly Satyr promises Clorin — 

" Brightest, if there be remaining 
Any service, without feigning 
1 will do it ; were I set 
To catch the nimble wind, or get 
Shadows gliding on the green." 

It would be a task no less difficult than this, 
to follow the flight of the poet's Muse, or catch 
her fleeting graces, fluttering her golden wings, 
and singing in notes angelical of youth, of love, 
and joy ! 

There is only one affected and ridiculous cha- 
racter in this drama, that of Thenot in love with 
Clorin. He is attached to her for her inviolable 
fidelity to her buried husband, and wishes her not 
to grant his suit, lest it should put an end to his 
passion. Thus he pleads to her against himself: 

" If you yield, I die 
To all affection; 'tis that loyalty 
You tie unto this grave I so admire ; 
And yet there's something else I would desire, 
If you would hear me, but withal deny. 
Oh Pan, what an uncertain destiny 
Hangs over all my hopes ! I will retire ; 
For if I longer stay, this double fire 
Will lick my life up." 

This is paltry quibbling. It is spurious logic, 
not genuine feeling. A pedant may hang his 



154 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

affections on the point of a dilemma in this man- 
ner ; but nature does not sophisticate ; or when 
she does, it is to gain her ends, not to defeat 
them. 



.The Sullen Shepherd turns out too dark a 
character in the end, and gives a shock to the 
gentle and pleasing sentiments inspired through- 
out. 

The resemblance of Com us to this poem is 
not so great as has been sometimes contended, 
nor are the particular allusions important or 
frequent. Whatever Milton copied, he made 
his own. In reading the Faithful Shepherdess, 
we find ourselves breathing the moonlight air 
under the cope of heaven, and wander by forest 
side or fountain, among fresh dews and flowers, 
following our vagrant fancies, or smit with the 
love of nature's works. In reading Milton's 
Comus, and most of his other works, we seem 
to be entering a lofty dome raised over our heads 
and ascending to the skies, and as if nature and 
every thing in it were but a temple and an 
image consecrated by the poet's art to the wor- 
ship of virtue and pure religion. The speech 
of Clorin, after she has been alarmed by the 
Satyr, is the only one of which Milton has made 
a free use, 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 155 

" And all lny fears go with thee. 

What greatness or what private hidden power 

Is there in me to draw submission 

From this rude man and beast 1 Sure I am mortal : 

The daughter of a shepherd ; he was mortal, 

And she that bore me mortal : prick my hand, 

And it will bleed; a fever shakes me, and 

The self-same wind that makes the young lambs shrink, 

Makes me a-cold : my fear says, I am mortal. 

Yet I have heard, (my mother told it me, 

And now I do believe it), if I keep 

My virgin flow'r uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair, 

No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend, 

Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves, 

Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion 

Draw me to wander after idle fires; 

Or voices calling me in dead of night 

To make me follow, and so tole me on 

Thro' mire and standing pools to find my ruin ; 

Else, why should this rough thing, who never knew 

Manners, nor smooth humanity, whose heats 

Are rougher than himself, and more mishapen, 

Thus mildly kneel to me 1 Sure there's a pow'r 

In that great name of Virgin, that binds fast 

All rude uncivil bloods, all appetites 

That break their confines : then, strong Chastity, 

Be thou my strongest guard, for here I'll dwell 

In opposition against fate and hell !" 

Ben Jonson's Sad Shepherd comes nearer 
it in style and spirit, but still with essential 
differences, like the two men, and without any 
appearance of obligation. Ben's is more homely 



156 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

and grostesque. Fletcher's is more visionary and 
fantastical. I hardly know which to prefer. If 
Fletcher has the advantage in general power and 
sentiment, Jonson is superior in naivete and truth 
of local colouring. 

The Two Noble Kinsmen is another monu- 
ment of Fletcher's genius; and it is said also 
of Shakespear's. The style of the first act 
has certainly more weight, more abruptness, 
and more involution, than the general style of 
Fletcher, with fewer softenings and fillings-up 
to sheathe the rough projecting points and piece 
the disjointed fragments together. For example, 
the compliment of Theseus to one of the Queens, 
that Hercules 

" Tumbled him down upon his Nemean hide, 
And swore his sinews thaw'd" 

at sight of her beauty, is in a bolder and more 
masculine vein than Fletcher usually aimed at. 
Again, the supplicating address of the distressed 
Queen to Hippolita, 

" Lend us a knee : 

But touch the ground for us no longer time 

Than a dove's motion, when the head's pluck'd off" — 

is certainly in the manner of Shakespear, with 
his subtlety and strength of illustration. But, 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 157 

on the other hand, in what immediately follows, 
relating to their husbands left dead in the field 
of battle, 

" Tell him if he i' tli* blood-siz'd field lay swoln, 
Shewing the sun his teeth, grinning at the moon, 
What you would do" — 

I think we perceive the extravagance of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, not contented with truth or 
strength of description, but hurried away by the 
love of violent excitement into an image of dis- 
gust and horror, not called for, and not at all 
proper in the mouth into which it is put. There 
is a studied exaggeration of the sentiment, and 
an evident imitation of the parenthetical inter- 
ruptions and breaks in the line, corresponding to 
what we sometimes meet in Shakespear^ as in 
the speeches of Leontes in the Winter's Tale ; 
but the sentiment is over-done, and the style 
merely mechanical. Thus Hippolita declares, 
on her lord's going to the wars, 

" We have been soldiers, and we cannot weep, 
When our friends don their helms, or put to sea, 
Or tell of babes broach'd on the lance, or women 
That have seethed their infants in (and after eat them) 
The brine they wept at killing 'em ; then if 
You stay to see of us such spinsters, we 
Should hold you here forever." 



158 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

One might apply to this sort of poetry what 
Marvel says of some sort of passions, that it is 

" Tearing our pleasures with rough strife 
Thorough the iron gates of life." 

It is not in the true spirit of Shakespear, who 
was " born only heir to all humanity/' whose 
horrors were not gratuitous, and who did not 
harrow up the feelings for the sake of making 
mere bravura speeches. There are also in this 
first act, several repetitions of Shakespear's phra- 
seology ; a thing that seldom or never occurs in 
his own works. For instance, 

" Past slightly 

His careless execution" — 

*' The very lees of such, millions of rates 
Exceed the wine of others" — 

" Let the event, 



" That never-erring arbitrator, tell us" — • 
" Like old importmenfs bastard" — 

There are also words that are never used by 
Shakespear in a similar sense : 

" All our surgeons 



Convent in their behoof"— 
" We convent nought else but woes" — 

In short, it appears to me that the first part of 
this play was written in imitation of Shakespear's 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASS1NGER. 159 

manner ; but I see no reason to suppose that it 
was his, but the common tradition, which is 
however by no means well established. The 
subsequent acts are confessedly Fletcher's, and 
the imitations of Shakespear which occur there 
(not of Shakespear's manner as differing from his, 
but as it was congenial to his own spirit and feel- 
ing of nature) are glorious in themselves, and 
exalt our idea of the great original which could 
give birth to such magnificent conceptions in 
another. The conversation of Palamon and Ar- 
cite in prison is of this description — the outline 
is evidently taken from that of Guiderius, Arvi- 
ragus, and Bellarius in Cymbeline, but filled 
up with a rich profusion of graces that make it 
his own again. 

" Pal. How do you, noble cousin ? 

Arc. How do you, Sir ? 

Pal. Why, strong enough to laugh at misery, 
And bear the chance of war yet. We are prisoners, 
I fear for ever, cousin. 

Arc. I believe it ; 
And to that destiny have patiently 
Laid up my hour to come. 

Pal. Oh, cousin Arcite, 
Where is Thebes now 1 where is our noble country 1 
Where are our friends and kindreds? Never more 
Must we behold those comforts; never see 
The hardy youths strive for the games of honour, 
Hung with the painted favours of their ladies, 
Like tall ships under sail : then start amongst 'em, 



i60 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

And as an east wind, leave 'em all behind us 
Like lazy clouds, whilst Palamon and Arcite, 
Even in the wagging of a wanton leg, 
Outstript the people's praises, won the garlands, 
Ere they have time to wish 'em ours. Oh, never 
Shall we two exercise, like twins of honour, 
Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses, 
Like proud seas under us! Our good swords now 
(Better the red-eyed God of war ne'er wore) 
Ravish'd our sides, like age, must run to rust, 
And deck the temples of those Gods that hate us : 
These hands shall never draw 'em out like lightning, 
To blast whole armies more. 

Arc. No, Palamon, 
Those hopes are prisoners with us : here we are, 
And here the graces of our youth must wither, 
Like a too-timely spring : here age must find us, 
And which is heaviest, Palamon, unmarried ; 
The sweet embraces of a loving wife 
Loaden with kisses, arm'd with thousand Cupids, 
Shall never clasp our necks I No issue know us, 
No figures of ourselves shall we e'er see, 
To glad our age, and like young eaglets teach 'em 
Boldly to gaze against bright arms, and say, 
Remember what your fathers were, and conquer ! 
The fair eyed maids shall weep our banishments, 
And in their songs curse ever-blinded fortune, 
Till she for shame see what a wrong she has done 
To youth and nature. This is all our world : 
We shall know nothing here, but one another; 
Hear nothing but the clock that tells our woes ; 
The vine shall grow, but we shall never see it; 
Summer shall come, and with her all delights, 
But dead-cold winter must inhabit here still. 

Pal. 'Tis too true, Arcite ! To our Theban hounds, 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 161 

That shook the aged forest with their echoes, 
No more now must we halloo; no more shake 
Our pointed javelins, while the angry swine 
Flies like a Parthian quiver from our rages, 
Struck with our well-steel'd darts! All valiant uses 
(The food and nourishment of noble minds) 
In us two here shall perish ; we shall die 
(Which is the curse of honour) lazily, 
Children of grief and ignorance. 

Arc. Yet, cousin, 
Even from the bottom of these miseries, 
From all that fortune can inflict upon us, 
I see two comforts rising, two mere blessings, 
If the Gods please to hold here; a brave patience, 
And the enjoying of our griefs together. 
Whilst Palamon is with me, let me perish 
If I think this our prison ! 

Pal. Certainly, 
'Tis a main goodness, cousin, that our fortunes 
Were twinn'd together ; 'tis most true, two souls 
Put in two noble bodies, let 'em suffer 
The gall of hazard, so they grow together, 
Will never sink ; they must not ; say they could, 
A willing man dies sleeping, and all's done. 

Arc. Shall we make worthy uses of this place, 
That all men hate so much 1 

Pal. How, gentle cousin? 

Arc. Let's think this prison a holy sanctuary 
To keep us from corruption of worse men ! , 

We're young, and yet desire the ways of honour : 
That, liberty and common conversation, 
The poison of pure spirits, might, like women, 
Woo us to wander from. What worthy blessing 
Can be, but our imaginations 

M 



162 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

May make it ours ? And here, being thus together, 

We are an endless mine to one another ; 

We're father, friends, acquaintance; 

We are, in one another, families ; 

I am your heir, and you are mine ; this place 

Is our inheritance ; no hard oppressor 

Dare take this from us ; here, with a little patience, 

We shall live long, and loving ; no surfeits seek us : 

The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas 

Swallow their youth ; were we at liberty, 

A wife might part us lawfully, or business; 

Quarrels consume us ; envy of ill men 

Crave our acquaintance ; I might sicken, cousin, 

Where you should never know it, and so perish 

Without your noble hand to close mine eyes, 

Or prayers to the Gods : a thousand chances, 

Were we from hence, would sever us. 

Pal. You have made me 
(I thank you, cousin Arcite) almost wanton 
With my captivity ; what a misery 
It is to live abroad, and every where ! 
'Tis like a beast, methinks ! I find the court here, 
I'm sure a more content ; and all those pleasures, 
That woo the wills of men to vanity, 
I see thro* now : and am sufficient 
To tell the world, 'tis but a gaudy shadow 
That old time, as he passes by, takes with him. 
What had we been, old in the court of Creon, 
Where sin is justice, lust and ignorance 
The virtues of the great ones 1 Cousin Arcite, 
Had not the loving Gods found this place for us, 
We had died as they do, ill old men unwept, 
And had their epitaphs, the people's curses ! 
Shall I say more ? 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 163 

Arc. I would hear you still. 

Pal. You shall. 
Is there record of auy two that lov'd 
Better than we do, Arcite 1 

Arc. Sure there cannot. 

Pal. I do not think it possible our friendship 
Should ever leave us. 

Arc. Till our deaths it cannot." 

Thus they " sing their bondage freely:" but just 
then enters iEmilia, who parts all this friendship 
between them, and turns them to deadliest foes. 

The jailor's daughter, who falls in love with 
Palamon, and goes mad, is a wretched in- 
terpolation in the story, and a fantastic copy 
of Ophelia. But they readily availed themselves 
of all the dramatic common-places to be found in 
Shakespear, love, madness, processions, sports, 
imprisonment, &c. and copied him too often in 
earnest, to have a right to parody him, as they 
sometimes did, in jest. — The story of the Two 
Noble Kinsmen is taken from Chaucer's Pala- 
mon and Arcite ; but the latter part, which in 
Chaucer is full of dramatic power and interest, 
degenerates in the play into a mere narrative of 
the principal events, and possesses little value or 
effect. — It is not improbable that Beaumont and 
Fletcher's having dramatised this story, put 
Dryden upon modernising it. 

m2 



164 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

I cannot go through all Beaumont and Fletch- 
er's dramas (52 in number), but I have men- 
tioned some of the principal, and the excellences 
and defects of the rest may be judged of from 
these. The Bloody Brother, A Wife for a Month, 
Bonduca, Thierry and Theodoret, are among the 
best of their tragedies : among the comedies, the 
Night Walker, the Little French Lawyer, and 
Monsieur Thomas, come perhaps next to the 
Chances, The Wild Goose Chase, and Rule a 
Wife and Have a Wife. — Philaster, or Love 
Lies a Bleeding, is one of the most admirable 
productions of these authors (the last I shall 
mention ) ; and the patience of Euphrasia, dis- 
guised as Bellario, the tenderness of Arethusa, 
and the jealousy of Philaster, are beyond all 
praise. The passages of extreme romantic beauty 
and high-wrought passion that I might quote, 
are out of number. One only must suffice, the 
account of the commencement of Euphrasia's love 
to Philaster. 

" Sitting in my window, 

Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a God 
I thought (but it was you) enter our gates ; 
My blood flew out, and back again as fast 
As I had puffed it forth and suck'd it in 
Like breath ; then was I called away in haste 
To entertain you. Never was a man 
Heav'd from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, rais'd 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 165 

So high in thoughts as I : you left a kiss 
Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep 
From you forever. I did hear you talk 
Far above singing ! 

And so it is our poets themselves write, " far 
above singing*." I am loth to part with them, 
and wander down, as we now must, 

" Into a lower world, to theirs obscure 
And wild — To breathe in other air 
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits." 

Ben Jonson's serious productions are, in my 
opinion, superior to his comic ones. What he 
does, is the result of strong sense and painful in- 
dustry ; but sense and industry agree better with 
the grave and severe, than with the light and 
gay productions of the Muse. a His plays were 
works," as some one said of them, " while others' 
works were plays." The observation had less of 
compliment than of truth in it. He may be said 
to mine his way into a subject, like a mole, 

* Euphrasia as the Page, j ust before speaking of her life, 
which Philaster threatens to take from her, says, 

" Tis not a life ; 

Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away." 

What exquisite beauty and delicacy ! 



166 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

and throws up a prodigious quantity of matter on 
the surface, so that the richer the soil in which 
he labours, the less dross and rubbish we have. 
His fault is, that he sets himself too much to 
his subject, and cannot let go his hold of an 
idea, after the insisting on it becomes tiresome 
or painful to others. But his tenaciousness of 
what is grand and lofty, is more praiseworthy 
than his delight in what is low and disagreeable. 
His pedantry accords better with didactic pomp 
than with illiterate and vulgar gabble; his learn- 
ing engrafted on romantic tradition or classical 
history, looks like genius. 

it jyfiraturque novas frondes et non sua poma." 

He was equal, by an effort, to the highest 
things, and took the same, and even more suc- 
cessful pains to grovel to the lowest. He raised 
himself up or let himself down to the level of his 
subject, by ponderous machinery. By dint of 
application, and a certain strength of nerve, he 
could do justice to Tacitus and Sallust no less 
than to mine Host of the New Inn. His tragedy 
of the Fall of Sej anus, in particular, is an ad- 
mirable piece of ancient mosaic. The principal 
character gives one the idea of a lofty column of 
solid granite, nodding to its base from its per- 
nicious height, and dashed in pieces, by a breath 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 167 

of air, a word of its creator — feared, not pitied, 
scorned, unwept, and forgotten. The depth of 
knowledge and gravity of expression sustain one 
another throughout : the poet has worked out the 
historian's outline, so that the vices and passions, 
the ambition and servility of public men, in the 
heated and poisoned atmosphere of a luxurious and 
despotic court, were never described in fuller or 
more glowing colours. — I am half afraid to give 
any extracts, lest they should be tortured into 
an application to other times and characters than 
those referred to by the poet. Some of the sounds, 
indeed, may bear (for what I know), an awkward 
construction : some of the objects may look double 
to squint-eyed suspicion. But that is not my 
fault. It only proves, that the characters of pro- 
phet and poet are implied in each other ; that he 
who describes human nature well once, describes 
it for good and all, as it was, is, and I begin to 
fear, will ever be. Truth always was, and 
must always remain a libel to the tyrant and the 
slave. Thus Satrius Secundus and Pinnarius 
Natta, two public informers in those days, are 
described as 

" Two of Sejauus' blood- hounds, whom he breeds 
With human flesh, to bay at citizens." 

But Rufus, another of the same well-bred gang, 



168 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

debating the point of his own character with 
two Senators whom he has entrapped, boldly 
asserts, in a more courtly strain, 

f To be a spy on traitors, 

Is honourable vigilance/' 

This sentiment of the respectability of the em- 
ployment of a government spy, which had slept 
in Tacitus for near two thousand years, has not 
been without its modern patrons. The effects 
of such " honourable vigilance" are very finely 
exposed in the following high-spirited dialogue 
between Lepidus and Arruntius, two noble Ro- 
mans, who loved their country, but were not 
fashionable enough to confound their country 
with its oppressors, and the extinguishers of its 
liberty. 

'*' Arr. What are thy arts (good patriot, teach them me) 
That have preserved thy hairs to this white dye, 
And kept so reverend and so dear a head 
Safe on his comely shoulders 1 

Lep. Arts, Arruntius! 
None but the plain and passive fortitude 
To suffer and be silent; never stretch 
These arms against the torrent ; live at home, 
With my own thoughts and innocence about me, 
Not tempting the wolves' jaws: these are my arts. 

Arr, I would begin to study 'em, if I thought 
They would secure me. May I pray to Jove 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 169 

In secret, and be safe 2 aye, or aloud ? 

With open wishes ? so I do not mention 

Tiberius or Sejanus 1 Yes, I must, 

If I speak out. Tis hard, that. May I think, 

And not be rack'd 1 What danger is't to dream 1 

Talk in one's sleep, or cough ] Who knows the law ? 

May I shake my head without a comment 1 Say 

It rains, or it holds up, and not be thrown 

Upon the Gemonies 1 These now are thinge, 

Whereon men's fortunes, yea, their fate depends : 

Nothing hath privilege 'gainst the violent ear. 

No place, no day, no hour (we see) is free 

(Not our religious and most sacred times) 

From some one kind of cruelty ; all matter, 

Nay, all occasion pleaseth. Madman's rage, 

The idleness of drunkards, women's nothing, 

Jesters' simplicity, all, all is good 

That can be catch'd at." 

'Tis a pretty picture ; and the duplicates of \t ? 
though multiplied without end, are seldom out 
of request. 

The following portrait of a prince besieged by 
flatterers (taken from Tiberius) has unrivalled 
force and beauty, with historic truth. 

— "If this man 
Had but a mind allied unto his words, 
How blest a fate were it to us, and Rome % 
Men are deceived, who think there can be thrall 
Under a virtuous prince. Wish'd liberty 
Ne'er lovelier looks than under such a crown. 



170 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

But when his grace is merely but lip-good, 

And that, no longer than he airs himself 

Abroad in public, there to seem to shun 

The strokes and stripes of flatterers, which within 

Are lechery unto him, and so feed 

His brutish sense with their afflicting sound, 

As (dead to virtue) he permits himself 

Be carried like a pitcher by the ears 

To every act of vice ; this is a case 

Deserves our fear, and doth presage the nigh 

And close approach of bloody tyranny. 

Flattery is midwife unto princes' rage : 

And nothing sooner doth help forth a tyrant 

Than that, and whisperers' grace, that have the time, 

The place, the power, to make all men offenders I" 

The only part of this play in which Ben 
Jonson has completely forgotten himself, (or 
rather seems not to have done so), is in the con- 
versations between Livia and Eudemus, about 
a wash for her face, here called a fums, to ap- 
pear before Sejanus. Catiline's Conspiracy does 
not furnish by any means an equal number of 
striking passages, and is spun out to an exces- 
sive length with Cicero's artificial and affected 
orations against Catiline, and in praise of himself. 
His apologies for his own eloquence, and decla- 
rations that in all his art he uses no art at all, 
put one in mind of Polonius's circuitous way of 
coming to the point. Both these tragedies, it 
might be observed, are constructed on the exact 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 171 

principles of a French historical picture, where 
every head and figure is borrowed from the an- 
tique ; but somehow, the precious materials of 
old Roman history and character are better pre- 
served in Jonson's page than on David's canvas. 

Two of the most poetical passages in Ben 
Jonson, are the description of Echo in Cynthia's 
Revels, and the fine comparison of the mind to 
a temple, in the New Inn ; a play which, on the 
whole, however, I can read with no patience. 

I must hasten to conclude this Lecture with 
some account of Massinger and Ford, who wrote 
in the time of Charles I. I am sorry I cannot 
do it con amove. The writers of whom I have 
chiefly had to speak were true poets, impas- 
sioned, fanciful, " musical as is Apollo's lute f 
but Massinger is harsh and crabbed, Ford fini- 
cal and fastidious. I find little in the works of 
these two dramatists, but a display of great 
strength or subtlety of understanding, inveteracy 
of purpose, and perversity of will. This is not 
exactly what we look for in poetry, which, ac- 
cording to the most approved recipes, should 
combine pleasure with profit, and not owe all its 
fascination over the mind to its power of shock- 
ing or perplexing us. The Muses should attract 
by grace or dignity of mien. Massinger makes 



172 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

an impression by hardness and repulsiveness of 
manner. In the intellectual processes which he 
delights to describe, " reason panders will :" he 
fixes arbitrarily on some object which there is 
no motive to pursue, or every motive com- 
bined against it, and then by screwing up his 
heroes or heroines to the deliberate and blind 
accomplishment of this, thinks to arrive at " the 
true pathos and sublime of human life." That is 
not the way. He seldom touches the heart or 
kindles the fancy. It is in vain to hope to excite 
much sympathy with convulsive efforts of the 
will, or intricate contrivances of the understand- 
ing., to obtain that which is better left alone, 
and where the interest arises principally from 
the conflict between the absurdity of the passion 
and the obstinacy with which it is persisted in. 
For the most part, his villains are a sort of 
lusus natures; his impassioned characters are like 
drunkards or madmen. Their conduct is ex- 
treme and outrageous, their motives unaccount- 
able and weak ; their misfortunes are without ne- 
cessity, and their crimes without temptation, to 
ordinary apprehensions. I do not say that this 
is invariably the case in all Massinger's scenes, 
but I think it will be found that a principle of 
playing at cross-purposes is the ruling passion 
throughout most of them. This is the case in 
the tragedy of the Unnatural Combat, in the 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 173 

Picture, the Duke of Milan, A New Way to 
Pay Old Debts, and even in the Bondman, and 
the Virgin Martyr, &e. In the Picture, Mat- 
thias nearly loses his wife's affections, by resort- 
ing to the far-fetched and unnecessary device of 
procuring a magical portrait to read the slightest 
variation in her thoughts. In the same play, 
Honoria risks her reputation and her life to gain 
a clandestine interview with Matthias, merely 
to shake his fidelity to his wife, and when she 
has gained her object, tells the king her husband 
in pure caprice and fickleness of purpose. The 
Virgin Martyr is nothing but a tissue of instan- 
taneous conversions to and from Paganism and 
Christianity. The only scenes of any real beauty 
and tenderness in this play, are those between 
Dorothea and Angelo, her supposed friendless 
beggar-boy, but her guardian angel in disguise, 
which are understood to be by Deckar. The 
interest of the Bondman turns upon two dif- 
ferent acts of penance and self-denial, in the 
persons of the hero and heroine, Pisander and 
Cleora. In the Duke of Milan (the most poeti- 
cal of Massinger's productions), Sforza's resolu- 
tion to destroy his wife, rather than bear the 
thought of her surviving him, is as much out of 
the verge of nature and probability, as it is un- 
expected and revolting, from the want of any 
circumstances of palliation leading to it. It 



174 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

stands out alone, a pure piece of voluntary atro- 
city, which seems not the dictate of passion, but 
a start of phrensy ; as cold-blooded in the exe- 
cution as it is extravagant in the conception. 

Again, Francesco, in this play, is a person 
whose actions we are at a loss to explain till the 
conclusion of the piece, when the attempt to 
account for them from motives originally amiable 
and generous, only produces a double sense of 
incongruity, and instead of satisfying the mind, 
renders it totally incredulous. He endeavours to 
seduce the wife of his benefactor, he then (failing) 
attempts her death, slanders her foully, and 
wantonly causes her to be slain by the hand of 
her husband, and has him poisoned by a nefa- 
rious stratagem, and all this to appease a high 
sense of injured honour, that " felt a stain like 
a wound," and from the tender overflowings of 
fraternal affection, his sister having, it appears, 
been formerly betrothed to, and afterwards de- 
serted by, the Duke of Milan. Sir Giles Over- 
reach is the most successful and striking effort 
of Massinger's pen, and the best known to the 
reader, but it will hardly be thought to form an 
exception to the tenour of the above remarks*. 

* The following criticism on this play has appeared in an- 
other publication, but may be not improperly inserted here : 
" A New Way to Pay Old Debts is certainly a very admi- 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 175 

The same spirit of caprice and sullenness survives 
in Rowe'sFair Penitent, taken from this author's 
Fatal Dowry. 

rable play, and highly characteristic of the genius of its au- 
thor, which was hard and forcible, and calculated rather to 
produce a strong impression than a pleasing one. There is 
considerable unity of design and a progressive interest in the 
fable, though the artifice by which the catastrophe is brought 
about, (the double assumption of the character of favoured 
lovers by Wellborn and Lovell), is somewhat improbable, and 
out of date ; and the moral is peculiarly striking, because its 
whole weight falls upon one who all along prides himself in 
setting every principle of justice and all fear of consequences 
at defiance. 

" The character of Sir Giles Overreach (the most prominent 
feature of the play, whether in the perusal, or as it is acted) 
interests us less by exciting our sympathy than our indigna- 
tion. We hate him very heartily, and yet not enough ; for he 
has strong, robust points about him that repel the imperti- 
nence of censure, and he sometimes succeeds in making us 
stagger in our opinion of his conduct, by throwing off any 
idle doubts or scruples that might hang upon it in his own 
mind, " like dew-drops from the lion's mane." His steadiness 
of purpose scarcely stands in need of support from the common 
sanctions of morality, which he intrepidly breaks through, 
and he almost conquers our prejudices by the consistent and 
determined manner in which he braves them. Self-interest is 
his idol, and he makes no secret of his idolatry : he is only a 
more devoted and unblushing worshipper at this shrine than 
other men. Self-will is the only rule of his conduct, to which he 
makes every other feeling bend : or rather, from the nature of 
his constitution, he has no sickly, sentimental obstacles to inter- 
rupt him in his headstrong career. He is a character of obdu- 



176 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

Ford is not so great a favourite with me as 
with some others, from whose judgment I dissent 

rate self-will, without fanciful notions or natural affections ; one 
who has no regard to the feelings of others, and who professes 
an equal disregard to their opinions. He minds nothing but 
his own ends, and takes the shortest and surest way to them. 
His understanding is clear-sighted, and his passions strong- 
nerved. Sir Giles is no flincher, and no hypocrite; and he 
gains almost as much by the hardihood with which he avows 
his impudent and sordid designs as others do by their caution 
in concealing them. He is the demon of selfishness personi- 
fied ; and carves out his way to the objects of his unprincipled 
avarice and ambition with an arm of steel, that strikes but 
does not feel the blow it inflicts. The character of calculat- 
ing, systematic self-love, as the master-key to all his actions, 
is preserved with great truth of keeping and in the most tri- 
fling circumstances. Thus ruminating to himself, he says, 
" I'll walk, to get me an appetite : 'tis but a mile; and exer- 
cise will keep me from being pursy !"— Yet to show the ab- 
surdity and impossibility of a man's being governed by any 
such pretended exclusive regard to his own interest, this very 
Sir Giles, who laughs at conscience, and scorns opinion, who 
ridicules every thing as fantastical but wealth, solid, substan- 
tial wealth, and boasts of himself as having been the founder 
of his own fortune, by his contempt for every other considera- 
tion, is ready to sacrifice the whole of his enormous posses- 
sions — to what? — to a title, a sound, to make his daughter 
" right honourable," the wife of a lord whose name he cannot 
repeat without loathing, and in the end he becomes the dupe 
of, and fails a victim to, that very opinion of the world which 
he despises ! 

The character of Sir Giles Overreach has been found fault 
with as unnatural ; and it may, perhaps, in the present refine- 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 177 

with diffidence. It has been lamented that the 
play of his which has been most admired (Tis 

merit of our manners, have become in a great measure obso- 
lete. But we doubt whether even still, in remote and insu- 
lated parts of the country, sufficient traces of the same cha- 
racter of wilful selfishness, mistaking the inyeteracy of its 
purposes for their rectitude, and boldly appealing to power 
as justifying the abuses of power, may not be found to war- 
rant this an undoubted original — probably a fac-simile of some 
individual of the poet's actual acquaintance. In less advanced 
periods of society than that in which we live, if we except 
rank, which can neither be an object of common pursuit nor 
immediate attainment, money is the only acknowledged pass- 
port to respect. It is not merely valuable as a security from 
want, but it is the only defence against the insolence of 
power, i^varice is sharpened by pride and necessity. There 
are then few of the arts, the amusements, and accomplish- 
ments that soften and sweeten life, that raise or refine it : the 
only way in which any one can be of service to himself or an- 
other, is by his command over the gross commodities of life ; 
and a man is worth just so much as he has. Where he who 
is not " lord of acres" is looked upon as a slave and a beggar, 
the soul becomes wedded to the soil by which its worth is 
measured, and takes root in it in proportion to its own strength 
and stubbornness of character. The example of Wellborn 
may be cited in illustration of these remarks. The loss of 
his land makes all the difference between "young master 
Wellborn" and " rogue Wellborn ;" and the treatment he 
meets with in this latter capacity is the best apology for the 
character of Sir Giles. Of the two it is better to be the op- 
pressor than the oppressed. 

" Massinger, it is true, dealt generally in extreme characters, 
as well as in very repulsive ones. The passion is with him 

N 



178 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

Pity She's a Whore) had not a less exceptionable 
subject. I do not know, but I suspect that the 

wound up to its height at first, and he never lets it down 
afterwards. It does not gradually arise out of previous cir- 
cumstances, nor is it modified by other passions. This gives 
an appearance of abruptness, violence, and extravagance to 
all his plays. Shakespear's characters act from mixed motives, 
and are made what they are by various circumstances. Mas- 
singer's characters act from single motives, and become what 
they are, and remain so, by a pure effort of the will, in spite 
of circumstances. , This last author endeavoured to embody 
an abstract principle ; labours hard to bring out the same in- 
dividual trait in its most exaggerated state ; and the force of 
his impassioned characters arises for the most part, from the 
obstinacy with which they exclude every other feeling. Their 
vices look of a gigantic stature from their standing alone. 
Their actions seem extravagant from their having always the 
same fixed aim — the same incorrigible purpose. The fault 
of Sir Giles Overreach, in this respect, is less in the excess to 
which he pushes a favourite propensity, than in the circum- 
stance of its being unmixed with any other virtue or vice. 

" We may find the same simplicity of dramatic conception in 
the comic as in the tragic characters of the author. Justice 
Greedy has but one idea or subject in his head throughout. 
He is always eating, or talking of eating. His belly is always 
in his mouth, and we know nothing of him but his appetite; 
he is as sharpset as travellers from off a journey. His land of 
promise touches on the borders of the wilderness : his thoughts 
are constantly in apprehension of feasting or famishing. A fat 
turkey floats before his imagination in royal state, and his 
hunger sees visions of chines of beef, venison pasties, and Nor- 
folk dumplings, as if it were seized with a calenture. He is a 
very amusing personage ; and in what relates to eating and 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 179 

exceptionableness of the subject is that which 
constitutes the chief merit of the play. The re- 
pulsiveness of the story is what gives it its criti- 
cal interest ; for it is a studiously prosaic state- 
ment of facts, and naked declaration of passions. 
It was not the least of Shakespear's praise, that 
he never tampered with unfair subjects. His 
genius was above it ; his taste kept aloof from it. 
I do not deny the power of simple painting and 
polished style in this tragedy in general, and of a 
great deal more in some few of the scenes, parti- 
cularly in the quarrel between Annabella and her 
husband, which is wrought up to a pitch of de- 
moniac scorn and phrensy with consummate art 
and knowledge ; but I do not find much other 
power in the author (generally speaking) than 
that of playing with edged tools, and knowing 
the use of poisoned weapons. And what confirms 
me in this opinion is the comparative inefficiency 
of his other plays. Except the last scene of the 
Broken Heart (which I think extravagant — 

drinking, as peremptory as Sir Giles himself. — Marrall is an- 
other instance of confined comic humour, whose ideas never 
wander beyond the ambition of being the implicit drudge of 
another's knavery or good fortune. He sticks to his steward- 
ship, and resists the favour of a salute from a fine lady as not 
entered in his accounts. The humour of this character is less 
striking in the play than in Munden's personification of it. The 
other characters do not require any particular analysis. They 
are very insipid, good sort of people." 

n2 



180 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

others may think it sublime, and be right) they 
are merely exercises of style and effusions of 
wire-drawn sentiment. Where they have not the 
sting of illicit passion, they are quite pointless, 
and seem painted on gauze, or spun of cobwebs. 
The affected brevity and division of some of the 
lines into hemistichs, &c. so as to make in one 
case a mathematical stair-case of the words and 
answers given to different speakers*, is an in- 
stance of frigid and ridiculous pedantry. An 
artificial elaborateness is the general characteris- 
tic of Ford's style. In this respect his plays re- 
semble Miss Baillie's more than any others I am 
acquainted with, and are quite distinct from the 
exuberance and unstudied force which charac- 
terised his immediate predecessors. There is 
too much of scholastic subtlety, an innate perver- 
sity of understanding or predominance of will, 
which either seeks the irritation of inadmissible 
subjects, or to stimulate its own faculties by 
taking the most barren, and making something 
out of nothing, in a spirit of contradiction. He 

* " Ithocles. Soft peace enrich this room. 

Orgilns. How fares the lady 1 

Philema. Dead ! 

Christalla. Dead ! 

Philema. Starv'd ! 

Christalla. Starved ! 

Ithocles. Me miserable!" 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 181 

does not draw along with the reader : he does 
not work upon our sympathy, but on our anti- 
pathy or our indifference ; and there is as little 
of the social or gregarious principle in his pro- 
ductions as there appears to have been in his 
personal habits, if we are to believe Sir John 
Suckling, who says of him in the Sessions of the 
Poets — 

" In the dumps John Ford alone by himself sat 
With folded arms and melancholy hat." 

I do not remember without considerable effort 
the plot or persons of most of hig plays — Perkin 
Warbeck, The Lover's Melancholy, Love's Sa- 
crifice, and the rest. There is little character, 
except of the most evanescent or extravagant 
kind (to which last class we may refer that of 
the sister of Calantha in the Broken Heart) -r- 
little imagery or fancy, and no action. It is but 
fair however to give a scene or two, in illustra- 
tion of these remarks (or in confutation of them, 
if they are wrong) and I shall take the conclud- 
ing one of the Broken Heart, which is held up 
as the author's master-piece. 

" Scene — A Room in the Palace. 
Loud Music— Enter Euphranea, led by Groneas and He- 
mophil: Prophilus, led by Christalla and Philcsna : Near- 
clms supporting Calautha, Crotolon, and Amelus.— (Music 
ceases). 



1S2 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

Cal. We miss our servants, Ithocles and Orgilus ; on 
whom attend they % 

Crot, My son, gracious princess, 
Whisper'd some new device, to which these revels 
Should be but usher : wherein I conceive 
Lord Ithocles and he himself are actors. 

Cal. A fair excuse for absence. As for Bassanes, 
Delights to him are troublesome. Armostes 
Is with the king ? 

Crot. He is. 

Cal. On to the dance ! 

Dear cousin, hand you the bride : the bridegroom must be 
Entrusted to my courtship. Be not jealous, 
Euphranea ; I shall scarcely prove a temptress. 
Fall to our dance ! 

( They dance the first change, during which enter 
Armostes). 

Arm. (In a whisper to Calantha). The king your father's 

dead. 
Cal. To the other change. 
Arm. Is't possible 1 

Another Dance. — Enter Bassanes. 

Bass. (In a whisper to Calantha). Oh! Madam, 
Penthea, poor Penthea's starved. 

Cal. Beshrew thee ! 
Lead to the next! 

Bass. Amazement dulls my senses. 

Another Dance. — Enter Orgilus. 

Org. Brave Ithocles is murder'd, murder'd cruelly. 

(Aside to Calantha). 
Cal. How dull this music sounds ! Strike up more sprightly: 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 183 

Our footings are not active like our heart*, 
Which treads the nimbler measure. 
Org. I am thunderstruck. 

The last Change.— Music ceases. 

Cal. So ; let us breathe awhile. Hath not this motion 
Rais'd fresher colours on our cheek? 

Near. Sweet princess, 
A perfect purity of blood enamels 
The beauty of your white. 

Cal. We all look cheerfully : 
And, cousin, 'tis methinks a rare presumption 
In any who prefers our lawful pleasures 
Before their own sour censure, to interrupt 
The custom of this ceremony bluntly. 

Near. None dares, lady. 

Cal. Yes, yes ; some hollow voice deliver'd to me 
How that the king was dead. 

Arm. The king is dead," &c. &c. 

This, I confess, appears to me to be tragedy in 
masquerade. Nor is it, I think,; accounted for, 
though it maybe in part redeemed by her solemn 
address at the altar to the dead body of her 
husband. 

" Cal. Forgive me. Now I turn to thee, thou shadow 
Of my contracted lord ! Bear witness all, 
I put my mother's wedding-ring upon 
His finger; 'twas my father's last bequest: 

(Places a ring on the finger of Ithocles). 
Thus I new marry him, whose wife I am : 
Death shall not separate us. Oh, my lords, 

* " High as our heart."— See passage from the Malcontent. 



184 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

I but deceiv'd your eyes with antic gesture, 

When one news strait came huddling on another 

Of death, and death, and death : still 1 danc'd forward ; 

But it struck home and here, and in an instant. 

Be such mere women, who with shrieks and outcries 

Can vow a present end to all their sorrows, 

Yet live to vow new pleasures, and outlive them. 

They are the silent griefs which cut the heartstrings : 

Let me die smiling. 

Near. 'Tis a truth too ominous. 

Cal, One kiss on these cold lips — my last : crack, crack ; 
Argos, now Sparta's king, command the voices 
Which wait at th' altar, now to sing the song 
I fitted for my end." 

And then, after the song, she dies. 

This is the true false gallop of sentiment : 
any thing more artificial and mechanical I can- 
not conceive. The boldness of the attempt, 
however, the very extravagance, might argue 
the reliance of the author on the truth of feeling 
prompting him to hazard it ; but the whole scene 
is a forced transposition of that already alluded 
to in Marston's Malcontent. Even the form of 
the stage directions is the same. 

" Enter Mendozo supporting the Duchess; Guerrino; the 
Ladies that are on the stage rise. Ferrardo ushers in the 
Duchess ; then takes a Lady to tread a measure. 

Aurelia. We will dance : music : we will dance 

Enter Prepasso. 
Who saw the Duke? the Duke? 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 185 

Aurelia. Music. 

Prepasso. The Duke ? is the Duke returned ? 

Aurelia, Music. 

Enter Celso. 

The Duke is quite invisible, or else is not. 

Aurelia. We are not pleased with your intrusion upon our 
private retirement ; we are not pleased : you have forgot your- 
selves. 

Enter a Page. 

Celso. Boy, thy master? where's the Duke? 

Page. Alas, I left him burying the earth with his spread 
joyless limbs ; he told me he was heavy, would sleep : bid me 
walk off, for the strength of fantasy oft made him talk in his 
dreams : I strait obeyed, nor ever saw him since ; but, 
wheresoe'er he is, he's sad. 

Aurelia. Music, sound high, as is our heart ; sound high. 

Enter Malevole and her Husband, disguised like a Hermit. 

Malevole. The Duke ? Peace, the Duke is dead. 
Aurelia. Music V Act IF. Scene 3. 



The passage in Ford appears to me an ill- 
judged copy from this. That a woman should 
call for music, and dance on in spite of the death 
of her husband whom she hates, without regard 
to common decency, is but too possible: that 
she should dance on with the same heroic perse- 
verance in spite of the death of her husband, of 
her father, and of every one else whom she loves, 
from regard to common courtesy or appearance, 
is not surely natural. The passions may silence 
the voice of humanity, but it is^ I think, equally 



186 ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 

against probability and decorum to make both 
the passions and the voice of humanity give way 
(as in the example of Calantha) to a mere form 
of outward behaviour. Such a suppression of the 
strongest and most uncontroulable feelings can 
only be justified from necessity, for some great 
purpose, which is not the case in Ford's play ; or 
it must be done for the effect and eclat of the 
thing, which is not fortitude but affectation. Mr. 
Lamb in his impressive eulogy on this passage 
in the Broken Heart has failed (as far as I can 
judge) in establishing the parallel between this 
uncalled-for exhibition of stoicism, and the story 
of the Spartan Boy. 

It may be proper to remark here, that most of 
the great men of the period I have treated of 
(except the greatest of all, and one other) were 
men of classical education, They were learned 
men in an unlettered age ; not self-taught men 
in a literary and critical age. This circumstance 
should be taken into the account in a theory of 
the dramatic genius of that age. Except Shake- 
spear, nearly all of them, indeed, came up from 
Oxford or Cambridge, and immediately began 
to write for the stage. No wonder. The first 
coming up to London in those days must have 
had a singular effect upon a young man of ge- 
nius, almost like visiting Babylon or Stisa, or a 



BEN JONSON, FORD, AND MASSINGER. 187 

journey to the other world. The stage (even as 
it then was), after the recluseness and austerity 
of a college-life, must have appeared like Ar- 
mida's enchanted palace, and its gay votaries like 

" Fairy elves beyond the Indian mount, 
Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side 
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, 
Or dreams he sees ; while overhead the moon 
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth 
Wheels her pale course : they on their mirth and dance 
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear: 
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds." 

So our young novices must have felt when they 
first saw the magic of the scene, and heard its 
syren sounds with rustic wonder, and the scho- 
lar's pride : and the joy that streamed from their 
eyes at that fantastic vision, at that gaudy shadow 
of life, of all its business and all its pleasures, 
and kindled their enthusiasm to join the mimic 
throng, still has left a long lingering glory be- 
hind it ; and though now " deaf the praised ear, 
and mute the tuneful tongue," lives in their elo- 
quent page, " informed with music, sentiment, 
and thought, never to die !" 



LECTURE V. 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. THE FOUR P'S, 
THE RETURN FROM PARNASSUS, GAMMER GUR- 
TON'S NEEDLE, AND OTHER WORKS. 

I shall, in this Lecture, turn back to give 
some account of single plays, poems, &c. ; the 
authors of which are either not known or not 
very eminent, and the productions themselves, 
in general, more remarkable for their singii- 
larity, or as specimens of the style and manners 
of the age, than for their intrinsic merit or poeti- 
cal excellence. There are many more works of 
this kind, however, remaining, than I can pre- 
tend to give an account of; and what I shall 
chiefly aim at, will be, to excite the curiosity of 
the reader, rather than to satisfy it. 

The Four P's is an interlude, or comic 
dialogue, in verse, between a Palmer, a Par- 
doner, a Poticary, and a Pedlar, in which each 
exposes the tricks of his own and his neighbours' 
profession, with much humour and shrewdness. 
It was written by John Heywood, the Epigram- 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 189 

matist, who flourished chiefly in the reign of 
Henry VIII. was the intimate friend of Sir 
Thomas More, with whom he seems to have 
had a congenial spirit, and died abroad, in con- 
sequence of his devotion to the Roman Catholic 
cause, about the year 1565. His zeal, however, 
on this head, does not seem to have blinded his 
judgment, or to have prevented him from using 
the utmost freedom and severity in lashing the 
abuses of Popery, at which he seems to have 
looked " with the malice of a friend." The 
Four P's bears the date of 1547. It is very cu- 
rious, as an evidence both of the wit, the man- 
ners, and opinions of the time. Each of the 
parties in the dialogue gives an account of the 
boasted advantages of his own particular calling, 
that is, of the frauds which he practises on cre- 
dulity and ignorance, and is laughed at by the 
others in turn. In fact, they all of them strive 
to outbrave each other, till the contest becomes 
a jest, and it ends in a wager, who shall tell the 
greatest lie? when the prize is adjudged to him, 
who says, that he had found a patient woman*. 
The common superstitions (here recorded) in 
civil and religious matters, are almost incre- 
dible ; and the chopped logic, which was the 
fashion of the time, and which comes in aid of 

* Or never known one otherwise than patient. 



ISO ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

the author's shrewd and pleasant sallies to expose 
them, is highly entertaining. Thus the Pardoner, 
scorning the Palmer's long pilgrimages and cir- 
cuitous road to Heaven, flouts him to his face, 
and vaunts his own superior pretensions. 

" Pard. By the first part of this last tale, 
It seemeth you came of late from the ale: 
For reason on your side so far doth fail, 
That you leave reasoning, and begin to rail. 
Wherein you forget your own part clearly, 
For you be as untrue as I : 
But in one point you are beyond me, 
For you may lie by authority, 
And all that have wandered so far, 
That no man can be their controller. 
And where you esteem your labour so much, 
I say yet again, my pardons are such, 

That if there were a thousand souls on a heap, 

I would bring them all to heaven as good sheep, 

As you have brought yourself on pilgrimage, 

In the last quarter of your voyage, 

Which is far a this side heaven, by God : 

There your labour and pardon is odd. 

With small cost without any pain, 

These pardons bring them to heaven plain : 

Give me but a penny or two-pence, 

And as soon as the soul departeth hence, 

In half an hour, or three quarters at the most, 

The soul is in heaven with the Holy Ghost." 

The Poticary does not approve of this arro- 
gance of the Friar, and undertakes, in mood and 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 191 

figure, to prove them both " false knaves." It 
is he, he says, who sends most souls to heaven, 
and who ought, therefore, to have the credit 
of it. 

" No soul, ye know, entereth heaven-gate, 
"Till from the body he be separate: 
And whom have ye known die honestly, 
Without help of the Poticary? 
Nay, all that cometh to our handling, 

Except ye hap to come to hanging 

Since of our souls the multitude 
I send to heaven, when all is view'd 
Who should but I then altogether 
Have thank of all their coming thither V 

The Pardoner here interrupts him captiously — 

" If ye kill'd a thousand in an hour's space, 

When come they to heaven, dying out of grace V 

But the Poticary not so baffled, retorts — 

" If a thousand pardons about your necks were tied ; 

When come they to heaven, if they never died 1 

* * ****** 

But when ye feel your conscience ready, 
I can send you to heaven very quickly." 

The Pedlar finds out the weak side of his new 
companions, and tells them very bluntly, on their 
referring their dispute to him, a piece of his 
mind. 



192 ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &e. 

" Now have I found one mastery, 
That ye can do indifferently ; 
And it is neither selling nor buying, 
But even only very lying." 

At this game of imposture, the cunning dealer 
in pins and laces undertakes to judge their 
merits ; and they accordingly set to work like 
regular graduates. The Pardoner takes the 
lead, with an account of the virtues of his relics ; 
and here we may find a plentiful mixture of Po- 
pish superstition and indecency. The bigotry 
of any age is by no means a test of its piety, or 
even sincerity. Men seemed to make themselves 
amends for the enormity of their faith by levity 
of feeling, as well as by laxity of principle; and 
in the indifference or ridicule with which they 
treated the wilful absurdities and extravagances 
to which they hood-winked their understand- 
ings, almost resembled children playing at blind- 
man's buff, who grope their way in the dark, 
and make blunders on purpose to laugh at their 
own idleness and folly. The sort of mummery 
at which Popish bigotry used to play at the time 
when this old comedy was written, was not quite 
so harmless as blind-man's buff : what was sport to 
her, was death to others. She laughed at her own 
mockeries of common sense and true religion, and 
murdered while she laughed. The tragic farce 
was no longer to be borne, and it was partly put 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 193 

an end to. At present, though her eyes are blind- 
folded, her hands are tied fast behind her, like the 
false Duessa's, The sturdy genius of modern 
philosophy has got her in much the same situation 
that Count Fathom has the old woman that he 
lashes before him from the robbers' cave in the 
forest. In the following dialogue of this lively 
satire, the most sacred mysteries of the Catholic 
faith are mixed up with its idlest legends by old 
Heywood, who was a martyr to his religious 
zeal, without the slightest sense of impropriety. 
The Pardoner cries out in one place (like a lusty 
Friar John, or a trusty Friar Onion) — 



Lo, here be pardons, half a dozen, 
For ghostly riches they have no cousin ; 
And moreover, to me they bring 
Sufficient succour for my living. 
And here be relics of such a kind, 
As in this world no man can find. 
Kneel down all three, and when ye leave kissing, 
Who list to offer shall have my blessing. 
Friends, here shall ye see even anon, 
Of All-Hallows the blessed jaw-bone. 
Mark well this, this relic here is a whipper ; 
My friends unfeigned, here is a slipper 
Of one of the seven sleepers, be sure. — 
Here is an eye-tooth of the great Turk : 
Whose eyes be once set on this piece of work, 
May happily lose part of his eye-sight, 
O 



194 ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

But not all till he be blind outright. 
Kiss it hardly with good devotion. 

Pot. This kiss shall bring us much promotion : 
Fogh, by St. Saviour I never kiss'd a worse. 

* # * * *#** 
For by All-Hallows, yet methinketh, 

That All-Hallows' breath stinketh. 

Palm. Ye judge All-Hallows' breath unknown: 
If any breath stink, it is your own. 

Pot. I know mine own breath from All-Hallows, 
Or else it were time to kiss the gallows. 

Pard. Nay, Sirs, here may ye see 
The great toe of the Trinity ; 
Who to this toe any money voweth, 
And once may roll it in his mouth, 
All his life after I undertake, 
He shall never be vex'd with the tooth-ache. 

Pot. I pray you turn that relic about; 
Either the Trinity had the gout ; 
Or else, because it is three toes in one, 
God made it as much as three toes alone. 

Pard. Well, let that pass, and look upon this : 
Here is a relic that doth not miss 
To help the least as well as the most : 

This is a buttock-bone of Penticost. 

* * * * * * * 

Here is a box full of humble bees, 
That stung Eve as she sat on her knees 
Tasting the fruit to her forbidden : 
Who kisseth the bees within this hidden, 
Shall have as much pardon of right, 

As for any relic he kiss'd this night 

Good friends, I have yet here in this glass, 
Which on the drink at the wedding was 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 195 

Of Adam and Eve undoubtedly : 
If ye honour this relic devoutly, 
Although ye thirst no whit the less, 
Yet shall ye drink the more, doubtless. 
After which drinking, ye shall be as meet 
To stand on your head as on your feet/' 

The same sort of significant irony runs through 
the Apothecary's knavish enumeration of miracu- 
lous cures in his possession. 

" For this medicine helpeth one and other, 

And bringeth them in case that they need no other. 
Here is a syrapus de Byzansis, 
A little thing is enough of this ; 
For even the weight of one scrippal 

Shall make you as strong as a cripple 

These be the things that break all strife, 

Between man's sickness and his life. 

From all pain these shall you deliver, 

And set you even at rest forever. 

Here is a medicine no more like the same, 

Which commonly is called thus by name. ..... 

Not one thing here particularly, 

But worketh universally ; * 

For it doth me as much good when I sell it, 

As all the buyers that take it or smell it. 

If any reward may entreat ye, 

I beseech your mastership be good to me, 

And ye shall have a box of marmalade, 

So fine that you may dig it with a spade." 

After these quaint but pointed examples of it, 
o2 



196 ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

Swift's boast with respect to the invention of 
irony, 

" Which I was born to introduce, 
Refin'd it first, and shew'd its use," 

can be allowed to be true only in part. 

The controversy between them being unde- 
cided, the Apothecary, to clench his pretensions 
" as a liar of the first magnitude/' by a cowp-de- 
grace, says to the Pedlar, " You are an honest 
man," but this home-thrust is somehow ingeni- 
ously parried. The Apothecary and Pardoner fall 
to their narrative vein again ; and the latter tells 
a story of fetching a young woman from the 
lower world, from which I shall only give one 
specimen more as an instance of ludicrous and 
fantastic exaggeration. By the help of a pass- 
port from Lucifer, " given in the furnace of our 
palace," he obtains a safe conduct from one of 
the subordinate imps to his master's presence. 

" This devil and I walked arm in arm 
So far, 'till he had brought me thither, 
Where all the devils of hell together 
Stood in array in such apparel, 
As for that day there meetly fell. 
Their horns well gilt, their claws full clean, 
Their tails well kempt, and as I ween, 
With sothery butter their bodies anointed; 
I never saw devils so well appointed. 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 197 

The master-devil sat in his jacket, 
And all the souls were playing at racket. 
None other rackets they had in hand, 
Save every soul a good fire-brand ; 
Wherewith they play'd so prettily, 
That Lucifer laugh'd merrily. 
And all the residue of the fiends 
Did laugh thereat full well like friends. 
But of my friend I saw no whit, 
Nor durst not ask for her as yet. 
Anon all this rout was brought in silence, 
And I by an usher brought to presence 
Of Lucifer; then low, as well I could, 
I kneeled, which he so well allow'd 
That thus he beek'd, and by St. Antony 
He smiled on me well-favour'dly, 
Bending his brows as broad as barn-doors ; 
Shaking his ears as rugged as burrs ; 
Rolling his eyes as round as two bushels; 
Flashing the fire out of his nostrils ; 
Gnashing his teeth so vain-gloriously, 
That metbought time to fall to flattery, 
Wherewith I told, as I shall tell ; 
Oh pleasant picture ! O prince of hell !" &c. 

The piece concludes with some* good whole- 
some advice from the Pedlar, who here, as well 
as in the poem of the Excursion, performs the 
part of Old Morality; but he does not seem, as 
in the latter case, to be acquainted with the 
:c mighty stream of Tendency." He is more "full 
of wise saws than modern instances;" as prosing, 
but less paradoxical ! 



198 ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

" But where ye doubt, the truth not knowing, 
Believing the best, good may be growing. 
In judging the best, no harm at the least: 
In judging the worst, no good at the best. 
But best in these things it seemeth to me, 
To make no judgment upon ye ; 
But as the church does judge or take them, 
So do ye receive or forsake them. 
And so be you sure you cannot err, 
But may be a fruitful follower." 

Nothing can be clearer than this. 

The Return from Parnassus was " iirst pub- 
licly acted," as the title-page imports, " by the 
Students in St. John's College, in Cambridge." 
It is a very singular, a very ingenious, and as I 
think, a very interesting performance. It con- 
tains criticisms on contemporary authors, stric- 
tures on living manners, and the earliest denun- 
ciation (I know of) of the miseries and unprofi- 
tableness of a scholar's life. The only part I 
object to in our author's criticism is his abuse of 
Marston ; and that, not because he says what is 
severe, but because he says what is not true of 
him. Anger may sharpen our insight into men's 
defects ; but nothing should make us blind to 
their excellences. The whole passage is, how- 
ever, so curious in itself (like the Edinburgh Re- 
view lately published for the year 1755) that I 
cannot forbear quoting a great part of it. We 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 199 

find in the list of candidates for praise many a 
name — 

" That like a trumpet, makes the spirits dance :" 

there are others that have long since sunk to the 
bottom of the stream of time, and no Humane 
Society of Antiquarians and Critics is ever likely 
to fish them up again. 

" Read the names," says Judicio. 

" Ingenioso. So I will, if thou wilt help me to censure them. 



John Marston, 

Kit. Marlowe, 

William Shakespear;"and 
one Churchyard [who 
is consigned to an un- 
timely grave.] 



Edmund Spenser, 

Henry Constable, 

Thomas Lodge, 

Samuel Daniel, 

Thomas Watson, 

Michael Drayton, 

John Davis, 

" Good men and true, stand together, hear your censure : 
what's thy judgment of Spenser? 

Jud. A sweeter swan than ever sung in Po ; 
A shriller nightingale than ever blest 
The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome. 
Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud, 
While he did chaunt his rural minstrelsy. 
Attentive was full many a dainty ear : 
Nay, hearers hung upon his melting tongue, 
While sweetly of his Faery Queen he sung ; 
While to the water's fall he tuned her fame, 
And in each bark engrav'd Eliza's name. 
And yet for all, this unregarding soil 
Unlaced the line of his desired life, 
Denying maintenance for his dear relief; 



200 ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

Careless even to prevent his exequy, 
Scarce deigning to shut up his dying eye. 

Ing. Pity it is that gentler wits should breed, 
Where thick-skinn'd chuffs laugh at a scholar's need. 
But softly may our honour'd ashes rest, 
That lie by merry Chaucer's noble chest. 

But I pray thee proceed briefly in thy censure, that I may 
be proud of myself, as in the first, so in the last, my censure 
may jump with thine. Henry Constable, Samuel Daniel, Tho- 
mas Lodge, Thomas Watson. 

Jud. Sweet Constable doth take the wondering ear, 
And lays it up in willing prisonment : 
Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage 
War with the proudest big Italian, 
That melts his heart in sugar'd sonnetting. 
Only let him more sparingly make use 
Of others' wit, and use his own the more, 
That well may scorn base imitation. 
For Lodge and Watson, men of some desert, 
Yet subject to a critic's marginal : 
Lodge for his oar in every paper boat, 
He that turns over Galen every day, 
To sit and simper Euphues' legacy. 

Ing. Michael Drayton. 

Jud. Drayton's sweet Muse is like a sanguine dye, 
Able to ravish the rash gazer's eye. 

Ing. However, he wants one true note of a poet of our 
times ; and that is this, he cannot swagger in a tavern, nor 
domineer in a hot-house. John Davis — 

Jud. Acute John Davis, I affect thy rhymes, 
That jerk in hidden charms these looser times : 
Thy plainer verse, thy unaffected vein, 
Is graced with a fair and sweeping train. 
John Marston— • 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 201 

Jud. What, Monsieur Kinsayder, put up man, put up for 
shame. 
Metbinks he is a ruffian in his style, 
Witliouten bands or garters' ornament. 
He quaffs a cup of Frenchman's helicon, 
Then royster doyster in his oily terms 
Cuts, thrusts, and foins at whomsoever he meets, 
And strews about Ram-alley meditations. 
Tut, what cares he for modest close-couch'd terms, 
Cleanly to gird our looser libertines? 
Give him plain naked words stript from their shirts, 
That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine. 

Ing. Christopher Marlowe — 

Jud. Marlowe was happy in his buskin'd Muse ; 
Alas ! unhappy in his life and end. 
Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell, 
Wit lent from heaven, but vices sent from hell. 

Ing. Our theatre hath lost, Pluto hath got 
A tragic penman for a dreary plot. 
Benjamin Jonsou. 

Jud. The wittiest fellow of a bricklayer in England. 

Ing, A mere empirick, one that gets what he hath by ob- 
servation, and makes only nature privy to what he endites : 
so slow an inventor, that he were better betake himself to his 
old trade of bricklaying, a blood whoreson, as confident now 
in making of a book, as he was in times past in laying of a 
brick. 
William Shakespear. 

Jud. Who loves Adonis' love, or Lucrece' rape, 
His sweeter verse contains heart-robbing life, 
Could but a graver subject him content, 
Without love's lazy foolish languishment." 

This passage might seem to ascertain the date 



202 ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

of the piece, as it must be supposed to have been 
written before Shakespear had become known as 
a dramatic poet. Yet he afterwards introduces 
Kempe the actor talking with Burbage, and say- 
ing, " Few (of the University) pen plays well : 
they smell too much of that writer Ovid, and of 
that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much 
of Proserpina and Jupiter, Why here's our fel- 
low Shakespear puts them all down ; aye, and 
Ben Jonson too." — There is a good deal of dis- 
content in all this ; but the author complains 
of want of success in a former attempt, and ap- 
pears not to have been on good terms with for- 
tune. The miseries of a poet's life form one 
of the favourite topics of The Return from Par- 
nassus, and are treated, as if by some one who 
had " felt them knowingly." Thus Philomusus 
and Studioso chaunt their griefs in concert. 

" Phil. Banu'd be those hours, when 'mongst the learned 
throng, 
By Granta's muddy bank we whilom sung. 

Stud, Bann'd be that hill which learned wits adore, 
Where erst we spent our stock and little store. 

Phil. Bann'd be those musty mews, where we have spent 
Our youthful days in paled languishment. 

Stud. Bann'd be those cozening arts that wrought our woe, 
Making us wandering pilgrims to and fro 

Phil. Curst be our thoughts whene'er they dream of hope ; 
Bann'd be those haps that henceforth flatter us, 
When mischief dogs us still, and still for aye, 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 203 

From our first birth until our burying day. 

In our first gamesome age, our doting sires 

Carked and car'd to have us lettered : 

Sent us to Cambridge where our oil is spent : 

Us our kind college from the teat did tent, 

And forced us walk before we weaned were. 

From that time since wandered have we still 

In the wide world, urg'd by our forced will ; 

Nor ever have we happy fortune tried ; 

Then why should hope with our rent state abide 2" 

" Out of our proof we speak." — This sorry 
matter-of-fact retrospect of the evils of a col- 
lege-life is very different from the hypothetical 
aspirations after its incommunicable blessings 
expressed by a living writer of true genius and 
a lover of true learning; who does not seem to 
have been cured of the old-fashioned prejudice 
in favour of classic lore, two hundred years after 
its vanity and vexation of spirit had been de- 
nounced in the Return from Parnassus : 

" I was not train'd in Academic bowers ; 
And to those learned streams I nothing owe, 
Which copious from those fair twin founts do flow : 
Mine have been any thing but studious hours. 
Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers, 
Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap. 
My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap; 
And I walk gowned; feel unusual powers. 
Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech ; 
Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain, 



204 ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, <fec. 

And ray skull teems with notions infinite : 

Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach 

Truths which transcend the searching schoolmen's vein; 

And half had stagger'd that stout Stagyrite*." 

Thus it is tViat our treasure always lies, where 
our knowledge does not ; and fortunately enough 
perhaps; for the empire of imagination is wider 
and more prolific than that of experience. 

The author of the old play, whoever he was, 
appears to have belonged to that class of mor- 
tals, who, as Fielding has it, feed upon their 
own hearts ; who are egotists the wrong way, 
" made desperate by too quick a sense of con- 
stant infelicity ;" and have the same intense un- 
easy consciousness of their own defects that most 
men have self-complacency in their supposed ad- 
vantages. Thus venting the dribblets of his 
spleen still upon himself, he prompts the Page to 
say, " A mere scholar is a creature that can 
strike fire in the morning at his tinder-box, put 
on a pair of lined slippers, sit reuming till din- 
ner, and then go to his meat when the bell rings ; 
one that hath a peculiar gift in a cough, and a 
licence to spit : or if you will have him defined 
by negatives, he is one that cannot make a good 
leg, one that cannot eat a mess of broth cleanly, 

* Sonnet to Cambridge, by Charles Lamb. 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 205 

one that cannot ride a horse without spur-gal- 
ling, one that cannot salute a woman, and look 
on her directly, one that cannot " 

If I was not afraid of being tedious, I might 
here give the examination of Signor Immerito, 
a raw ignorant clown (whose father has pur- 
chased him a living) by Sir Roderick and the 
Recorder, which throws considerable light on 
the state of wit and humour, as well as of eccle- 
siastical patronage in the reign of Elizabeth. It 
is to be recollected, that one of the titles of this 
play is A Scourge for Simony. 

" Rec. For as much as nature has done her part in mak- 
ing you a handsome likely man — in the next place some art is 
requisite for the perfection of nature : for the trial whereof, 
at the request of my worshipful friend, I will in some sort 
propound questions fit to be resolved by one of your pro- 
fession. Say what is a person, that was never at the uni- 
versity 1 

Im. A person that was never in the university, is a living 
creature that can eat a tythe pig. 

Rec. Very well answered : but you should have added — 
and must be officious to his patron. Write down that an- 
swer, to shew his learning in logic. 

Sir Rad. Yea, boy, write that down : very learnedly, in 
good faith. I pray now let me ask you one question that I 
remember, whether is the masculine gender or the feminine 
more worthy? 

Im. The feminine, Sir. 

Sir Rad. The right answer, the right answer. In good 



206 ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

faith, I have been of that mind always : write, boy, that, to 
shew he is a grammarian. 

Rec. What university are you of? 

Im. Of none. 

SirRad. He tells truth: to tell truth is an excellent virtue: 
boy, make two heads, one for his learning, another for his 
virtues, and refer this to the head of his virtues, not of his 
learning. Now, Master Recorder, if it please you, I will 
examine him in an author, that will sound him to the depth ; 
a book of astronomy, otherwise called an almanack. 

Rec. Very good, Sir Roderick : it were to be wished there 
were no other book of humanity ; then there would not be 
such busy state-prying fellows as are now a-days. Proceed, 
good Sir. 

Sir Rad. What is the dominical letter? 

Im. C, Sir, and please your worship. 

Sir Rad. A very good answer, a very good answer, the 
very answer of the book. Write down that, and refer it to 
his skill in philosophy. How many days hath September ? 

Im. Thirty days hath September, April, June, and Novem- 
ber, February hath twenty- eight alone, and all the rest hath 
thirty and one. 

Sir Rad. Very learnedly, in good faith : he hath also a 
smack in poetry. Write down that, boy, to shew his learning 
in poetry. How many miles from Waltham to London? 

Im. Twelve, Sir. 

Sir Rad. How many from New Market to Grantham ? 

Im. Ten, Sir. 

Sir Rad. Write down that answer of his, to shew his learn- 
ing in arithmetic. 

Page. He must needs be a good arithmetician that counted 
[out] money so lately. 

Sir Rad. When is the new moon ? 

Im. The last quarter, the 5th day, at two of the clock, and 
thirty-eight minutes in the morning. 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 207 

Sir Rad. How call you him that is weather-wise 1 

Rec. A good astronomer. 

Sir Rad. Sirrah, boy, write him down for a good astrono- 
mer. What day of the month lights the queen's day on 1 

Im. The 17th of November. 

Sir Rad. Boy, refer this to his virtues, and write him 
down a good subject. 

Page. Faith, he were an excellent subject for two or three 
good wits : he would make a fine ass for an ape to ride upon. 

Sir Rad. x\nd these shall suffice for the parts of his learn- 
ing. Now it remains to try, whether you be a man of a good 
utterance, that is, whether you can ask for the strayed heifer 
with the white face, as also chide the boys in the beJfry, and 
bid the sexton whip out the dogs : let me hear your voice. 

Im. If any man or woman — 

Sir Rad. That's too high. 

Im. If any man or woman — 

Sir Rad. That's too low. 

Im. If any man or woman can tell any tidings of a horse 
with four feet, two ears, that did stray about the seventh 
hour, three minutes in the forenoon, the fifth day — 

Sir Rad. Boy, write him down for a good utterance. Mas- 
ter Recorder, I think he hath been examined sufficiently. 

Rec. Aye, Sir Roderick, 'tis so : we have tried him very 
thoroughly. 

Page. Aye, we have taken an inventory of his good parts, 
and prized them accordingly. 

Sir Rad. Signior Immerito, forasmuch as we have made a 
double trial of thee, the one of your learning, the other of 
your erudition ; it is expedient, also, in the next place, to 
give you a few exhortations, considering the greatest clerks 
are not the wisest men : this is therefore first to exhort you to 
abstain from controversies ; secondly, not to gird at men of 
worship, such as myself, but to use yourself discreetly ; thirdly, 
not to speak when any man or woman coughs : do so, and in 



208 ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

so doing, I will persevere to be your worshipful friend and 
loving patron. Lead Immerito in to my son, and let him 
dispatch him, and remember my tythes to be reserved, paying 
twelve-pence a-year." 

Gammer Gurton's Needle* is a still older and 
more curious relic ; and is a regular comedy in 
five acts, built on the circumstance of an old 
woman having lost her needle, which throws the 
w r hole village into confusion, till it is at last pro- 
videntially found sticking in an unlucky part of 
Hodge's dress. This must evidently have hap- 
pened at a time when the manufactures of Shef- 
field and Birmingham had not reached the 
height of perfection which they have at present 
done. Suppose that there is only one sewing- 
needle in a parish, that the owner, a diligent 
notable old dame, loses it, that a mischief- 
making wag sets it about that another old 
woman has stolen this valuable instrument of 
household industry, that strict search is made 
every where in-doors for it in vain, and that 
then the incensed parties sally forth to scold it 
out in the open air, till words end in blows, and 
the affair is referred over to the higher authori- 
ties, and we shall have an exact idea ( though 
perhaps not so lively a one) of what passes in 
this authentic document between Gammer Gur- 
ton and her Gossip Dame Chat, Dickon* the 

* The name of Still has been assigned as the author of this 
singular production, with the date of 1566. 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 209 

Bedlam (the causer of these harms), Hodge, 
Gammer Gurton's servant, Tyb her maid, Cocke, 
her 'prentice boy, Doll, Scapethrift, Master Bail- 
lie his master, Doctor Rat, the Curate, and Gib 
the Cat, who may be fairly reckoned one of the 
dramatis personce, and performs no mean part. 

" Gog's crosse, Gammer" (says Cocke the boy), " if ye will 

laugh, look in but at the door, 
And see how Hodge lieth tumbling and tossing amidst the 

floor, 
Raking there, some fire to find among the ashes dead" 

[That is, to light a candle to look for the lost needle], 
•' Where there is not a spark so big as a pin's head : 
At last in a dark corner two sparks he thought he sees, 
Which were indeed nought else but Gib our cat's two eyes. 
Puff, quoth Hodge ; thinking thereby to have fire without 

doubt ; 
With that Gib shut her two eyes, and so the fire was out ; 
And by and by them open'd, even as they were before, 
With that the sparks appeared, even as they had done of yore: 
And even as Hodge blew the fire, as he did think, 
Gib, as he felt the blast, strait way began to wink ; 
Till Hodge fell of swearing, as came best to his turn ; 
The fire was sure bewitch'd, and therefore would not burn. 
At last Gib up the stairs, among old posts and pins, 
And Hodge he hied him after, till broke were both his shins ; 
Cursing and swearing oaths, were never of his making, 
That Gib would fire the house, if that she were not taken." 

Diccon, the strolling beggar (or Bedlam, as 
he is called ) steals a piece of bacon from behind 
Gammer Gurton's door, and in answer to Hodge's 

p 



210 ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

complaint of being dreadfully pinched for hunger, 
asks — 

« Why Hodge, was there none at home thy dinner for to set ? 
Hodge. Gog's bread, Diccon, I came too late, was no- 
thing there to get : 

Gib (a foul fiend might on her light) lick'd the milk-pan so 
clean : 

See Diccon, 'twas not so well wash'd this seven year, I ween. 

A pestilence light on all ill luck, I had thought yet for all 
this, 

Of a morsel of bacon behind the door, at worst I should not 
miss: 

But when I sought a slip to cut, as I was wont to do, 

Gog's souls, Diccon, Gib our cat had eat the bacon too." 

Hodge's difficulty in making Diccon under- 
stand what the needle is which his dame has 
lost, shews his superior acquaintance with the 
conveniences and modes of abridging labour in 
more civilised life, of which the other had no 
idea. 

" Hodge, Has she not gone, trowest now thou, and lost her 

neele V [So it is called here.] 
" Die* (says staring). Her eel, Hodge ! Who fished of 

late 1 That was a dainty dish. 
Hodge. Tush, tush, her neele, her neele, her neele, man, 
'tis neither flesh nor fish : 
A little thing with a hole in the end, as bright as any siller 

[silver], 
Small, long, sharp at the point, and strait as any pillar. 

Die. I know not what a devil thou meanest, thou bring'st 
me more in doubt. 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, «Src. 211 

Hodge (answers- with disdain). Know'st not with what 
Tom tailor's man sits broching through a clout? 
A neele, a neele, my Gammer's neele is gone." 

The rogue Diccon threatens to shew Hodge a 
spirit; but though Hodge runs away through 
pure fear before it has time to appear, he does 
not fail, in the true spirit of credulity, to give a 
faithful and alarming account of what he did not 
see to his mistress, concluding with a hit at the 
Popish Clergy. 

" By the mass, I saw him of late call up a great black devil. 
Ob, the knave cried, ho, ho, he roared and he thunder'd ; 
And ye had been there, I am sure you'd murrainly ha' won- 
der'd. 
Gam. Wast not thou afraid, Hodge, to see him in his place 1 
Hodge (lies and saysj. No, and he had come to me, 
should have laid him on his face, 
Should have promised him. 

Gam. But, Hodge, had he no horns to push 1 
Hodge. As long *as your two arms. Saw ye never Friar 
Rush, 
Painted on a cloth, with a fine long cow's tail, 
And crooked cloven feet, and many a hooked nail 1 
For all the world (if I should judge) should reckon him his 

brother : 
Look even what face Friar Rush had, the devil had such an- 
other." 

He then adds (quite apocryphally ) while he is 
in for it, that " the devil said plainly that Dame 
Chat had got the needle," which makes all the 

p2 



212 ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

disturbance. The same play contains the well- 
known good old song, beginning and ending — 

" Back and side, go bare, go bare, 
Both foot and hand go eold : 
But belly, God send thee good ale enough, 
Whether it be new or old. 
I cannot eat but little meat, 
My stomach is not good ; 
But sure I think, that I can drink 
With him that wears a hood : 
Though I go bare, take ye no care ; 
I nothing am a-cold : 
I stuff my skin so full within 
Of jolly good ale and old. 
Back and side go bare, &c. 

I love no roast, but a nut-brown toast, 

And a crab laid in the fire : 

A little bread shall do me stead, 

Much bread I not desire. 

No frost nor snow, no wind I trow, 

Can hurt me if I wolde, 

I am so wrapt and thoroughly lapt 

In jolly good ale and old. 

Back and side go bare, &c. 

And Tib, my wife, that as her life 
Loveth well good ale to seek ; 
Full oft drinks she, till ye may see 
The tears run down her cheek : 
Then doth she troll to me the bowl, 
Even as a malt-worm sholde : 
And saith, sweetheart, I took my part 
Of this jolly good ale and old. 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 213 

Back and side go bare, go bare, 

Both foot and hand go cold : 

But belly, God send thee good ale enough, 

Whether it be new or old. 

Such was the wit, such was the mirth of our 
ancestors : — homely, but hearty ; coarse per- 
haps, but kindly. Let no man despise it, for 
" Evil to him that evil thinks." To think it 
poor and beneath notice because it is not just 
like ours, is the same sort of hypercriticism that 
was exercised by the person who refused to read 
some old books, because they were " such very 
poor spelling." The meagreness of their literary 
or their bodily fare was at least relished by 
themselves ; and this is better than a surfeit or 
an indigestion. It is refreshing to look out of 
ourselves sometimes, not to be always holding 
the glass to our own peerless perfections : and as 
there is a dead wall which always intercepts the 
prospect of the future from our view (all that we 
can see beyond it is the heavens), it is as well to 
direct our eyes now and then without scorn to 
the page of history, and repulsed in our attempts 
to penetrate the secrets of the next six thousand 
years, not to turn our backs on old long syne ! 

The other detached plays of nearly the same 
period of which I proposed to give a cursory ac- 
count, are Green's Tu Quoque, Microcosmus^ 



214. ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

Lingua, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The 
Pinner of Wakefield, and the Spanish Tragedy. 
Of the spurious plays attributed to Shakespear, 
and to be found in the editions of his works, such 
as the Yorkshire Tragedy, Sir John Oldcastle, 
The Widow of Watling Street, &c. I shall 
say nothing here, because I suppose the reader 
to be already acquainted with them, and because 
I have given a general account of them in ano- 
ther work. 

Green's Tu Quoque, by George Cook, a con- 
temporary of Shakespear's, is so called from 
Green the actor, who played the part of Bubble 
in this very lively and elegant comedy, with the 
cant phrase of Tu Quoque perpetually in his 
mouth. The double change of situation be- 
tween this fellow and his master, Staines, each 
passing from poverty to wealth, and from wealth 
to poverty again, is equally well imagined and 
executed. A gay and gallant spirit pervades the 
whole of it ; wit, poetry, and morality, each take 
their turn in it. The characters of the two 
sisters, Joyce and Gertrude, are very skilfully 
contrasted, and the manner in which they mu- 
tually betray one another into the hands of their 
lovers, first in the spirit of mischief, and after- 
wards of retaliation, is quite dramatic. " If 
you cannot find in your heart to tell him you 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 215 

love him. 111 sigh it out for you. Come, we 
little creatures must help one another," says the 
Madcap to the Madonna. As to style and mat- 
ter, this play has a number of pigeon-holes full 
of wit and epigrams which are flying out in al- 
most every sentence. I could give twenty pointed 
conceits, wrapped up in good set terms. Let 
one or two at the utmost suffice. A bad hand at 
cards is thus described. Will Rash says to 
Scattergood, " Thou hast a wild hand indeed : 
thy small cards shew like a troop of rebels, and 
the knave of clubs their chief leader." Bubble 
expresses a truism very gaily on finding himself 
equipped like a gallant — " How apparel makes 
a man respected ! The very children in the street 
do adore me." We find here the first mention of 
Sir John Suckling's " melancholy hat," as a 
common article of wear — the same which he 
chose to clap on Ford's head, and the first in- 
stance of the theatrical double entendre which has 
been repeated ever since of an actor's ironically 
abusing himself in his feigned character. 

" Gervase. They say Green's a good clown. 
Bubble. (Played by Green, says J Green ! Green's an ass. 
Scattergood. Wherefore do you say so? 
Bub. Indeed, I ha' no reason ; for they say he's as like me 
as ever he can look." 

The following description of the dissipation 



.21$ ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

of a fortune in the hands of a spendthrift is in- 
genious and beautiful. 

" Know that which made him gracious in your eyes, 
And gilded o'er his imperfections, 
Is wasted and consumed even like ice, 
Which by the vehemence of heat dissolves, 
And glides to many rivers : so his wealth, 
That felt a prodigal hand, hot in expence, 
Melted within his gripe, and from his coffers 
Ran like a violent stream to other men's." 

Microcosm us, by Thomas Nabbes, is a dra- 
matic mask or allegory, in which the Senses, 
the Soul, a Good and a Bad Genius, Conscience, 
&c. contend for the dominion of a man ; and 
notwithstanding the awkwardness of the ma- 
chinery, is not without poetry, elegance, and 
originality. Take the description of morning as 
a proof. 

" What do I see 1 Blush, grey-eyed morn and spread 
Thy purple shame upon the mountain tops : 
Or pale thyself with envy, since here comes 
A brighter Venus than the dull-eyed star 
That lights thee up." 

But what are we to think of a play, of which 
the following is a literal list of the dramatis per- 
sona ? 

" Nature, a fair woman, in a white robe, wrought with 
birds, beasts, fruits, flowers, clouds, stars, &c. ; on her 
head a wreath of flowers interwoveu with stars. 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 217 

Janus, a man with two faces, signifying Providence, in a 
yellow robe, wrought with snakes, as he is deus anni: on 
his head a crown. He is Nature's husband. 

Fire, a fierce-countenanced young mau, in a flame-coloured 
robe, wrought with gleams of fire ; his hair red, and on his 
head a crown of flames. His creature a Vulcan. 

Air, a young man of a variable countenance, in a blue robe; 
wrought with divers-coloured clouds ; his hair blue ; and on 
his head a wreath of clouds. His creature a giant or silvan. 

Water, a young woman in a sea-green robe, wrought with 
waves; her hair a sea-green, and on her head a wreath of 
sedge bound about with waves. Her creature a syren. 

Earth, a young woman of a sad countenance, in a grass- 
green robe, wrought with sundry fruits and flowers ; her 
hair black, and on her head a chaplet of flowers. Her 
creature a pigmy. 

Love, a Cupid in a flame-coloured habit ; bow and quiver, 
a crown of flaming hearts, &c. 

Physander, a perfect grown man, in a long white robe, 
and on his head a garland of white lilies and roses mixed. 
His name a,7ro t*ij Qvo-zog xa* rS ay^oj. 

Choler, a fencer; his clothes red. 

Blood, a dancer, in a watchet-coloured suit. 

Phlegm, a physician, an old man ; his doublet white and 
black ; trunk hose. 

Melancholy, a musician: his complexion, hair, and 
clothes, black ; a lute in his hand. He is likewise an 
amorist. 

Bellanima, a lovely woman, in a long white robe; on her 
head a wreath of white flowers. She signifies the soul. 

Bonus Genius, an angel, in a like white robe; wings and 
wreath white. 

Malus Genius, a devil, in a black robe ; hair, wreath, and 
wings, black. 



218 ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

The Five Senses — Seeing, a chambermaid ; Hearing, the 
usher of the hall ; Smelling, a huntsman or gardener; 
Tasting, a cook; Touching, a gentleman usher. 

Sensuality, a wanton woman, richly habited, but lasci- 
viously dressed, &c. 

Temperance, a lovely woman, of a modest countenance ; 
her garments plain, but decent, &c. 

A Philosopher, \ 

An Eremite, f „ , » ... a 

> all properly habited. 

A Ploughman, % 

A Shepherd, 

Three Furies as they are commonly fancied. 

Fear, the Crier of the Court, with a tipstaff. 

Conscience, the Judge of the Court. 

Hope and Despair, an advocate and a lawyer. 

The other three Virtues, as they are frequently expressed by 

painters. 
The Heroes, in bright antique habits, &c. 

The front of a workmanship, proper to the fancy of the rest, 
adorned with brass figures of angels and devils, with seve- 
ral inscriptions ; the title is an escutcheon, supported by an 
Angel and a Devil. Within the arch a continuing perspec- 
tive of ruins, which is drawn still before the other scenes, 
whilst they are varied. 

THE INSCRIPTIONS. 

Hinc gloria. Hinc poena. 

Appetitus ooni. Appetitus Mali" 

Antony Brewer's Lingua (1607) is of the 
same cast. It is much longer as well as older 
than Microcosnius. It is also an allegory cele- 
brating the contention of the Five Senses for the 
crown of superiority, and the pretensions of 
Lingua or the Tongue to be admitted as a sixth 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 219 

sense. It is full of child's play, and old wives' 
tales; but is not unadorned with passages dis- 
playing strong good sense, and powers of fantas- 
tic description. 

Mr. Lamb has quoted two passages from it — 
the admirable enumeration of the characteristics 
of different languages, " The Chaldee wise, 
the Arabian physical,' 1 &c. ; and the striking 
description of the ornaments and uses of tra- 
gedy and comedy. The dialogue between Me- 
mory, Common Sense, and Phantastes, is cu- 
rious and worth considering. 

" Common Sense. Why, good father, why are you so late 
now-a-days? 

Memory. Thus 'tis ; the most customers I remember myself 
to have, are, as your lordship knows, scholars, and now-a- 
days the most of them are become critics, bringing me home 
such paltry things to lay up for them, that I can hardly find 
them again. 

Phantastes. Jupiter, Jupiter, I had thought these flies 
had bit none but myself: do critics tickle you, i'faith? 

Mem. Very familiarly: for they must know of me, for- 
sooth, how every idle word is written in all the musty moth- 
eaten manuscripts, kept in all the old libraries in every city, 
betwixt England and Peru. 

Common Sense. Indeed I have noted these times to affect 
antiquities more than is requisite. 

Mem. I remember in the age of Assaracus and Ninus, and 
about the wars of Thebes, and the siege of Troy, there were 
few things committed to my charge, but those that were well 



220 ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

worthy the preserving ; but now every trifle must be wrapp'd 
up in the volume of eternity. A rich pudding-wife, or a cob- 
ler, cannot die but I must immortalize his name with an epi- 
taph ; a dog cannot water in a nobleman's shoe, but it must 
be sprinkled into the chronicles ; so that I never could re- 
member my treasure more full, and never emptier of honour- 
able and true heroical actions." 

And again Mendacio puts in his claim with 
great success to many works of uncommon merit. 

" Appe. Thou, boy ! how is this possible 1 Thou art but 
a child, and there were sects of philosophy before thou wert 
born. 

Men. Appetitus, thou mistakest me ; I tell thee three thou- 
sand years ago was Mendacio born in Greece, nursed in Crete, 
and ever since honoured every where : I'll be sworn I held old 
Homer's pen when he writ his Iliads and his Odysseys. 

Appe. Thou hadst need, for I hear say he was blind. 

Men. I helped Herodotus to pen some part of his Muses ; 
lent Pliny ink to write his history ; rounded Rabelais in the 
car when he historified Pantagruel ; as for Lucian, I was his 
genius ; O, those two books de Vera Historia, however they 
go under his name, I'll be sworn I writ them every tittle. 

Appe. Sure as I am hungry, thou'lt have it for lying. But 
hast thou rusted this latter time for want of exercise? 

Men. Nothing less. I must confess I would fain have jog- 
ged Stow and great Hollingshed on their elbows, when they 
were about their chronicles ; and, as I remember, Sir John 
Mandevill's travels, and a great part of the Decads, were of 
my doing : but for the Mirror of Knighthood, Bevis of South- 
ampton, Palmerin of England, Amadis of Gaul, Huon de 
Bourdeaux, Sir Guy of Warwick, Martin Marprelate, Robin 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 221 

Hood, Garagantua, Gerilion, and a thousand such exquisite 
monuments as these, no doubt but they breathe in my breath 
up and down." 

The Merry Devil of Edmonton which has 
been sometimes attributed to Shakespear, is as- 
suredly not unworthy of him. It is more likely, 
however, both from the style and subject-matter 
to have been Hey wood's than any other person's. 
It is perhaps the first example of sentimental co- 
medy we have — romantic, sweet, tender, it ex- 
presses the feelings of honour, of love, and friend- 
ship in their utmost delicacy, enthusiasm, and 
purity. The names alone, Raymond Moun- 
chersey, Frank Jerningham, Clare, Millisent, 
" sound silver sweet like lovers' tongues by 
night." It sets out with a sort of story of Doctor 
Faustus, but this is dropt as jarring on the ten- 
der chords of the rest of the piece. The wit of 
the Merry Devil of Edmonton is as genuine as 
the poetry. Mine Host of the George is as good 
a fellow as Boniface, and the deer-stealing 
scenes in the forest between him, Sir John the 
curate, Smug the smith, and Banks the miller^ 
are " very honest knaveries," as Sir Hugh Evans 
has it. The air is delicate, and the deer, shot 
by their cross-bows, fall without a groan ! Frank 
Jerningham says to Clare, 

" The way lies right : hark, the clock strikes at Enfield : 
what's the hour ? 



222 ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 

Young Clare, Ten, the bell says. 

Jern. It was but eight when we set out from Cheston : Sir 
John and his sexton are at their ale to-night, the clock runs 
at random. 

Y. Clare. Nay, as sure as thou livest, the villainous vicar 
is abroad in the chase. The priest steals more venison than 
half the country. 

Jern. Millisent, how dost thou ? 

Mil. Sir, very well. 
I would to God we were at Brian's lodge." 

A volume might be written to prove this last 
answer Shakespear's, in which the tongue says 
one thing in one line, and the heart contradicts 
it in the next ; but there were other writers liv- 
ing in the time of Shakespear, who knew these 
subtle windings of the passions besides him, — 
though none so well as he ! 

The Pinner of Wakefield, or George a Green, 
is a pleasant interlude, of an early date, and the 
author unknown, in which kings and coblers, 
outlaws and maid Marians are " hail-fellow well 
met," and in which the features of the antique 
world are made smiling and amiable enough. 
Jenkin, George a Greene's servant, is a notori- 
ous wag. Here is one of his pretended pranks. 

" Jenkin. This fellow comes to me, 
And takes me by the bosom : you slave, 
Said he, hold my horse, and look 
He takes no cold in his feet. 



ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, &c. 223 

No, marry shall he, Sir, quoth I. 
I'll lay my cloak underneath him. 
I took my cloak, spread it all along, 
And his horse on the midst of it. 

George. Thou clown, did'st thou set his horse upon thy cloak? 

Jenk. Aye, but mark how I served him. 
Madge and he was no sooner gone down into the ditch 
But I plucked out my knife, cut four holes in my cloak, 

and made his horse stand on the bare ground." 

The first part of Jeronymo is an indifferent 
piece of work, and the second, or the Spanish 
Tragedy by Kyd, is like unto it, except the inter- 
polations idly said to have been added by Ben 
Jonson, relating to Jeronymo's phrensy " which 
have all the melancholy madness of poetry, if not 
the inspiration." 



LECTURE VI. 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, F.BEAUMONT, 
P. FLETCHER, DRAYTON, DANIEL, &c. SIR P. SID- 
NEY'S ARCADIA, AND OTHER WORKS. 

I shall, in the present Lecture, attempt to 
give some idea of the lighter productions of the 
Muse in the period before us, in order to shew 
that grace and elegance are not confined entirely 
to later times, and shall conclude with some 
remarks on Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. 

I have already made mention of the lyrical 
pieces of Beaumont and Fletcher. It appears 
from his poems, that many of these were com- 
posed by Francis Beaumont, particularly the 
very beautiful ones in the tragedy of the False 
One, the Praise of Love in that of Valentinian, 
and another in the Nice Valour or Passionate 
Madman, an Address to Melancholy, which is 
the perfection of this kind of writing. 

" Hence, all you vain delights; 
As short as are the nights 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, Ac. 225 

Wherein you spend your folly : 

There's nought in this life sweet, 

If man were wise to see't, 

But only melancholy, 

Oh, sweetest melancholy. 

Welcome folded arms and fixed eyes, 

A sight that piercing mortifies; 

A look that's fasten'd to the ground, 

A tongue chain'd up without a sound ; 

Fountain heads, and pathless groves, 

Places which pale passion loves : 

Moon-light walks, when all the fowls 

Are warmly hous'd, save bats and owls ; 

A midnight bell, a passing groan, 

These are the sounds we feed upon : 

Then stretch our bones in a still, gloomy valley ; 

Nothing so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy." 

It has been supposed ( and not without every 
appearance of good reason) that this pensive 
strain, " most musical, most melancholy," gave 
the first suggestion of the spirited introduction 
to Milton's II Penseroso. 



" Hence, vain deluding joys, 

The brood of folly without father bred ! 
But hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy, 
Hail, divinest melancholy, 
Whose saintly visage is too bright 
To hit the sense of human sight, &c." 



The same writer thus moralises on the life of 
Q 



226 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

man, in a set of similes, as apposite as they are 
light and elegant. 

" Like to the falling of a star, 
Or as the flights of eagles are, 
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue, 
Or silver drops of morning dew, 
Or like a wind that chafes the flood, 
Or bubbles which on water stood : 
Even such is man, whose borrow'd light 
Is straight called in and paid to night ; — 
The wind blows out, the bubble dies ; 
The spring intomb'd in autumn lies ; 
The dew's dried up, the star is shot, 
The flight is past, and man forgot." 

" The silver foam which the wind severs from 
the parted wave" is not more light or sparkling 
than this : the dove's downy pinion is not softer 
and smoother than the verse. We are too ready 
to conceive of the poetry of that day, as altoge- 
ther old-fashioned, meagre, squalid, deformed, 
withered and wild in its attire, or as a sort of 
uncouth monster, like " grim-visaged comfort- 
less despair," mounted on a lumbering, un- 
manageable Pegasus, dragon- winged, and leaden- 
hoofed ; but it as often wore a sylph-like form 
with Attic vest, with faery feet, and the butter- 
fly's gaudy wings. The bees were said to have 
come, and built their hive in the mouth of 
Plato when a child; and the fable might be 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 227 

transferred to the sweeter accents of Beaumont 
and Fletcher ! Beaumont died at the age of five 
and twenty. One of these writers makes Bel- 
lario the Page say to Philaster, w T ho threatens 
to take his life — 

" Tis not a life ; 

Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away." 

But here was youth, genius, aspiring hope, 
growing reputation, cut off like a flower in its 
summer-pride, or like " the lily on its stalk 
green," which makes us repine at fortune and 
almost at nature, that seem to set so little store 
by their greatest favourites. The life of poets 
is or ought to be (judging of it from the light 
it lends to ours) a golden dream, full of bright- 
ness and sweetness, " lapt in Elysium ;" and 
it gives one a reluctant pang to see the splendid 
vision, by which they are attended in their path 
of glory, fade like a vapour, and their sacred 
heads laid low in ashes, before the sand of com- 
mon mortals has run out. Fletcher too was pre- 
maturely cut off by the plague. Raphael died at 
four and thirty, and Correggio at forty. Who can 
help wishing that they had lived to the age of 
Michael Angelo and Titian ? Shakespear might 
have lived another half century, enjoying fame 
and repose, " now that his task was smoothly 
done," listening to the music of his name, and 

f2 



228 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

better still, of his own thoughts, without minding 
Rynier's abuse of u the tragedies of the last age." 
His native stream of Avon would then have flowed 
with softer murmurs to the ear, and his plea- 
sant birth-place, Stratford, would in that case 
have worn even a more gladsome smile than it 
does, to the eye of fancy ! — Poets however have 
a sort of privileged after-life, which does not 
fall to the common lot : the rich and mighty are 
nothing but while they are living : their power 
ceases with them : but " the sons of memory, the 
great heirs of fame" leave the best part of what 
was theirs, their thoughts, their verse, what 
they most delighted and prided themselves in, 
behind them — imperishable, incorruptible, im- 
mortal ! — Sir John Beaumont (the brother of our 
dramatist) whose loyal and religious effusions 
are not worth much, very feelingly laments his 
brother's untimely death in an epitaph upon him. 

" Thou should'st have followed me, but death to blame 
Miscounted years, and measured age by fame : 
So dearly hast thou bought thy precious lines, 
Their praise grew swiftly ; so thy life declines. 
Thy Muse, the hearer's Queen, the reader's Love, 
All ears, all hearts (but Death's) could please and move." 

Beaumont's verses addressed to Ben Jonson at 
the Mermaid, are a pleasing record of their 
friendship, and of the way in which they " fleeted 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, <fec. 229 

the time carelessly" as well as studiously " in 
the golden age" of our poetry. 

[Lines sent from the Country with two unfinished Comedies, 
which deferred their merry meetings at the Mermaid.] 

" The sun which doth the greatest comfort bring 
To absent friends, because the self-same thing 
They know they see, however absent is, 
(Here our best hay-maker, forgive me this, 
It is our country style) in this warm shine 
I lie and dream of your full Mermaid wine: 
Oh, we have water mixt with claret lees, 
Drink apt to bring in drier heresies 
Than here, good only for the sonnet's straiu, 
With fustian metaphors to stuff the brain : — 
Think with one draught a man's invention fades, 
Two cups had quite spoil'd Homer's Iliads. 
'Tis liquor that will find out Sutclift's wit, 
Like where he will, and make him write worse yet : 
Fill'd with such moisture, in most grievous qualms* 
Did Robert Wisdom write his singing psalms : 
And so must I do this : and yet I think 
It is a potion sent us down to drink 
By special providence, keep us from fights, 
Make us not laugh when we make legs to knights ; 
'Tis this that keeps our minds fit for our states, 

A medicine to obey our magistrates. 

* * ****** 

Methinks the little wit I had is lost 
Since I saw you, for wit is like a rest 

* So in Rochester's Epigram. 

" Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms, 
When they translated David's Psalms/' 



230 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

Held up at tennis, which men do the best 

With the best gamesters. What things have we seen 

Done at the Mermaid ! Hard words that have been 

So nimble, and so full of subtile flame, 

As if that every one from whence they came 

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 

And had resolv'd to live a fool the rest 

Of his dull life ; then when there hath been thrown 

Wit able enough to justify the town 

For three days past, wit that might warrant be 

For the whole city to talk foolishly, 

Till that were cancelled ; and when that was gone, 

We left an air behind us, which alone 

Was able to make the two next companies 

Right witty, though but downright fools more wise." 

I shall not in this place repeat Marlowe's ce- 
lebrated song, " Come live with me and be my 
love," nor Sir Walter Raleigh's no less cele- 
brated answer to it (they may both be found in 
Walton's Complete Angler, accompanied with 
scenery and remarks worthy of them); but I may 
quote as a specimen of the high and romantic 
tone in which the poets of this age thought and 
spoke of each other the " Vision upon the con- 
ceiptofthe Fairy Queen," understood to be by 
Sir Walter Raleigh. 

" Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay, 
Within that temple, where the vestal flame 
Was wont to burn, and passing by that way 
To see that buried dust of living fame, 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, #e. 231 

Whose tomb fair Love, and fairer Virtue kept. 
All suddenly I saw the Faery Queen: 
At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept ; 
And from thenceforth those Graces were not seen, 
For they this queen attended, in whose stead 
Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse. 
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed, 
And groans of buried ghosts the Heav'ns did pierce, 
Where Homer's spright did tremble all for grief, 
And curst th' access of that celestial thief." 

A higher strain of compliment cannot well be 
conceived than this, which raises your idea even 
of that which it disparages in the comparison, 
and makes you feel that nothing could have torn 
the writer from his idolatrous enthusiasm for 
Petrarch and his Laura's tomb, but Spenser's 
magic verses and diviner Faery Queen — the 
one lifted above mortality, the other brought 
from the skies ! 

The name of Drummond of Hawthornden is 
in a manner entwined in cypher with that of 
Ben Jonson. He has not done himself or Jonson 
any credit by his account of their conversation ; 
but his Sonnets are in the highest degree elegant, 
harmonious, and striking. It appears to me that 
they are more in the manner of Petrarch than any 
others that we have, with a certain intenseness 
in the sentiment, an occasional glitter of thought, 



232 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

and uniform terseness of expression. The reader 
may judge for himself from a few examples. 

" I know that all beneath the moon decays, 
And what by mortals in this world is wrought 
In time's great periods shall return to nought ; • 
That fairest states have fatal nights and days. 
I know that all the Muse's heavenly lays, 
With toil of spright which are so dearly bought, 
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought; 
That there is nothing lighter than vain praise. 
I know frail beauty's like the purple flow'r, 
To which one morn oft birth and death affords : 
That love a jarring is of minds' accords, 
Where sense and will bring under reason's pow'r. 
Know what I list, this all cannot me move, 
But that, alas! I both must write and love." 

Another — 

" Fair moon, who with thy cold and silver shine 
Mak'st sweet the horror of the dreadful night, 
Delighting the weak eye with smiles divine, 
Which Phoebus dazzles with his too much light; 
Bright queen of the first Heav'n, if in thy shrine 
By turning oft, and Heav'n's eternal might, 
Thou hast not yet that once sweet fire of thine, 
Endymion, forgot, and lovers' plight : 
If cause like thine may pity breed in thee, 
And pity somewhat else to it obtain, 
Since thou hast power of dreams as well as he 
That holds the golden rod and mortal chain ; 
Now while she sleeps*, in doleful guise her show, 
These tears, and the black map of all my woe." 

* His mistress. 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 233 

This is the eleventh sonnet : the twelfth is 
full of vile and forced conceits, without any sen- 
timent at all ; such as calling the Sun " the 
Goldsmith of the stars," " the enameller of the 
moon," and " the Apelles of the flowers." This 
is as bad as Cowley or Sir Philip Sidney. Here 
is one that is worth a million of such quaint de- 
vices. 

" To the Nightingale. 

Dear chorister, who from these shadows sends*, 

Ere that the blushing morn dare show her light, 

Such sad lamenting strains, that night attends 

(Become all earf) stars stay to hear thy plight. 

If one whose grief even reach of thought transcends, 

Who ne'er (not in a dream) did taste delight, 

May thee importune who like case pretends, 

And seem'st to joy in woe, in woe's despite : 

Tell me (so may thou milder fortune try, 

And long, long sing !) for what thou thus complains*, 

Since winter's gone, and sun in dappled sky 

Enamour'd smiles on woods and flow'ry plains 1 

The bird, as if my questions did her move, 

With trembling wings sigh'd forth, " I love, I love." 

Or if a mixture of the Delia Cruscan style be 
allowed to enshrine the true spirit of love and 
poetry, we have it in the following address to 
the river Forth, on which his mistress had em- 
barked. 

* Scotch for send'st, for coniplain'st, &c. 
f " I was all ear," see Milton's Comus. 



234 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

" Slide soft, fair Forth, and make a chrystal plain, 
Cut your white locks, and on your foamy face 
Let not a wrinkle be, when you embrace 
The boat that earth's perfections doth contain. 
Winds wonder, and through wondering hold your peace, 
Or if that you your hearts cannot restrain 
From sending sighs, feeling a lover's case, 
Sigh, and in her fair hair yourselves enchain. 
Or take these sighs, which absence makes arisj 
From my oppressed breast, and fill the sails, 
Or some sweet breath new brought from Paradise. 
The floods do smile, love o'er the winds prevails, 
And yet huge waves arise ; the cause is this, 
The ocean strives with Forth the boat to kiss." 

This to the English reader will express the 
very soul of Petrarch, the molten breath of sen- 
timent converted into the glassy essence of a set 
of glittering but still graceful conceits. 

" The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets," 
and the critic that tastes poetry, " his ruin meets.'' 
His feet are clogged with its honey, and his eyes 
blinded with its beauties; and he forgets his 
proper vocation, which is to buz and sting. I 
am afraid of losing my way in Drummond's 
" sugar'd sonnetting ;" and have determined more 
than once to break off abruptly ; but another and 
another tempts the rash hand and curious eye, 
which I am loth not to give, and I give it ac- 
cordingly : for if I did not write these Lectures 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, Sec. "35 

to please myself, I am at least sure I should 
please nobody else. In fact, I conceive that 
what I have undertaken to do in this and former 
cases, is merely to read over a set of authors 
with the audience, as I would do with a friend, 
to point out a favourite passage, to explain an 
objection ; or if a remark or a theory occurs, to 
state it in illustration of the subject, but neither 
to tire him nor puzzle myself with pedantic rules 
and pragmatical formulas of criticism that can 
do no good to any body. I do not come to the 
task with a pair of compasses or a ruler in my 
pocket, to see whether a poem is round or square, 
or to measure its mechanical dimensions, like a 
meter and alnager of poetry : it is not in my bond 
to look after exciseable articles or contraband 
wares, or to exact severe penalties and forfeitures 
for trifling oversights, or to give formal notice 
of violent breaches of the three unities, of geo- 
graphy and chronology ; or to distribute printed 
stamps and poetical licences (with blanks to be filled 
up) on Mount Parnassus. I do not come armed 
from top to toe with colons and semicolons, with 
glossaries and indexes, to adjust the spelling 
or reform the metre, or to prove by everlasting 
contradiction and querulous impatience, that for- 
mer commentators did not know the meaning of 
their author, any more than I do, who am angry 
at them, only because I am out of humour with 
myself — as if the genius of poetry lay buried 



236 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, Ac. 

under the rubbish of the press ; and the critic was 
the dwarf-enchanter who was to release its airy 
form from being stuck through with blundering 
points and misplaced commas ; or to prevent its 
vital powers from being worm-eaten and con- 
sumed, letter by letter, in musty manuscripts and 
black-letter print. I do not think that is the way 
to learn " the gentle craft" of poesy or to teach it to 
others : — to imbibe or to communicate its spirit ; 
which if it does not disentangle itself and soar 
above the obscure and trivial researches of anti- 
quarianism is no longer itself, " a Phoenix gazed 
by all." At least, so it appeared to me (it is for 
others to judge whether I was right or wrong). 
In a word, I have endeavoured to feel what 
was good, and to " give a reason for the faith 
that was in me" when necessary, and when in 
my power. This is what I have done, and what 
I must continue to do. 

To return to Drummond. — I cannot but think 
that his Sonnets come as near as almost any 
others to the perfection of this kind of writing, 
which should embody a sentiment and every 
shade of a sentiment, as it varies with time and 
place and humour, with the extravagance or 
lightness of a momentary impression, and should, 
when lengthened out into a series, form a his- 
tory of the wayward moods of the poet's mind, 
the turns of his fate ; and imprint the smile or 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 237 

frown of his mistress in indelible characters on 
the scattered leaves. I will give the two follow- 
ing, and have done with this author. 

" In vain I haunt the cold and silver springs, 
To quench the fever burning in my veins : 
In vain (love's pilgrim) mountains, dales, and plains 
I over-run ; vain help long absence brings. 
In vain, my friends, your counsel me constrains 
To fly, and place my thoughts on other things. 
Ah, like the bird that fired hath her wings, 
The more I move the greater are my pains. 
Desire, alas ! desire a Zeuxis new, 
From the orient borrowing gold, from western skies 
Heavenly cinnabar, sets before my eyes 
In every place her hair, sweet look and hue; 
That fly, run, rest I, all doth prove but vain ; 
My life lies in those eyes which have me slain." 

The other is a direct imitation of Petrarch's 
description of the bower where he first saw 
Laura. 

" Alexis, here she stay'd, among these pines, 
Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair : 
Here did she spread the treasure of her hair, 
More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines ; 
Here sat she by these musked eglantines ; 
The happy flowers seem yet the print to bear: 
Her voice did sweeten here thy sugar'd lines, 
To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend an ear. 
She here me first perceiv'd, and here a morn 
Of bright carnations did o'erspread her face : 
Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born, 
Here first I got a pledge of promised grace ; 



238 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

But ah ! what serves to have been made happy so, 
Sith passed pleasures double but new woe !" 

I should, on the whole, prefer Drummond's 
Sonnets to Spenser's ; and they leave Sidney's, 
picking their way through verbal intricacies 
and " thorny queaches*," at an immeasurable 
distance behind. Drummond's other poems have 
great, though not equal merit ; and he may be 
fairly set down as one of our old English clas- 
sics. 

Ben Jonson's detached poetry I like much, as 
indeed I do all about him, except when he de- 
graded himself by " the laborious foolery" of 
some of his farcical characters, which he could 
not deal with sportively, and only made stupid 
and pedantic. I have been blamed for what I 
have said, more than once, in disparagement of 
Ben Jonson's comic humour ; but I think he was 
himself aware of his infirmity, and has (not 
improbably) alluded to it in the following speech 
of Crites in Cynthia's Revels. 

" Oh, how despised and base a thing is man, 
If he not strive to erect his groveling thoughts 
Above the strain of flesh ! But how more cheap, 
When even his best and understanding part 
(The crown and strength of all his faculties) 

* Chapman's Hymn to Pan. 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 239 

Floats like a dead-drown'd body, on the stream 

Of vulgar humour, mix'd with commonest dregs: 

I suffer for their guilt now ; and my soul 

(Like one that looks on ill-affected eyes) 

Is hurt with mere intention on their follies. 

Why will I view them then 1 my sense might ask me : 

Or is't a rarity or some new object 

That strains my strict observance to this point : 

But such is the perverseness of our nature, 

That if we once but fancy levity, 

(How antic and ridiculous soever 

It suit with us) yet will our muffled thought 

Chuse rather not to see it than avoid it, &c." 

Ben Jonson had self-knowledge and self-reflec- 
tion enough to apply this to himself. His tena- 
ciousness on the score of critical objections does 
not prove that he was not conscious of them him- 
self, but the contrary. The greatest egotists are 
those whom it is impossible to offend, because 
they are wholly and incurably blind to their own 
defects ; or if they could be made to see them, 
would instantly convert them into so many 
beauty-spots and ornamental graces. Ben Jon- 
son's fugitive and lighter pieces are not devoid 
of the characteristic merits of that class of com- 
position; but still often in the happiest of them, 
there is a specific gravity in the author's pen, that 
sinks him to the bottom of his subject, though 
buoyed up for a time with art and painted 
plumes, and produces a strange mixture of the 



240 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, Ac. 

mechanical and fanciful, of poetry and prose, 
in his songs and odes. For instance, one of his 
most airy effusions is the Triumph of his Mis- 
tress : yet there are some lines in it that seem 
inserted almost by way of burlesque. It is how- 
ever well worth repeating. 

*' See the chariot at hand here of love, 
Wherein my lady rideth ! 
Each that draws it is a swan or a dove ; 
And well the car love guideth ! 
As she goes all hearts do duty 

Unto her beauty : 
And enamour'd, do wish so they might 

But enjoy such a sight, 
That they still were to run by her side, 
Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride. 
Do but look on her eyes, they do light 

All that love's world compriseth ! 
Do but look on her hair, it is bright 
As love's star when it riseth ! 
Do but mark, her forehead's smoother 

Than words that soothe her : 
And from her arch'd brows, such a grace 

Sheds itself through the face, 
As alone there triumphs to the life 
All the gain, all the good of the elements' strife. 

Have you seen but a bright lily grow, 
Before rude hands have touch'd it 1 
Ha' you mark'd but the fall of the snow 
Before the soil hath smutch'd it 1 
Ha' you felt the wool of beaver ? 
Or swan's down ever ] 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 241 

Or have smelt o' the bud o' the briar? 

Or the nard in the fire? 

Or have tasted the bag of the bee 2 

Oh, so white! Oh so soft! Oh so sweet is she!" 

His Discourse with Cupid, which follows, is 
infinitely delicate and piquant, and without one 
single blemish. It is a perfect " nest of spicery." 

" Noblest Charis, you that are 
Both my fortune and my star ! 
And do govern more my blood, 
Than the various moon the flood ! 
Hear, what late discourse of you, 
Love and I have had ; and true. 
'Mongst my Muses finding me, 
Where he chanc't your name to see 
Set, and to this softer strain ; 
" Sure," said he, " if I have brain, 
This here sung can be no other, 
By description, but my mother ! 
So hath Homer prais'd her hair ; 
So Anacreon drawn the air 
Of her face, and made to rise, 
Just about her sparkling eyes, 
Both her brows, bent like my bow. 
By her looks I do her know, 
Which you call my shafts. And see ! 
Such my mother's blushes be, 
As the bath your verse discloses 
In her cheeks, of milk and roses ; 
8uch as oft I wanton in. 
And, above her even chin, 
Have you plac'd the bank of kisses, 
Where you say, men gather blisses, 
R 



242 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

Rip'ned with a breath more sweet, 

Than when flowers and west-winds meet. 

Nay, her white and polish 'd neck, 

With the lace that doth it deck, 

Is my mother's ! hearts of slain 

Lovers, made into a chain ! 

And between each rising breast 

Lies the valley, call'd my nest, 

Where I sit and proyne my wings 

After flight ; and put new stings 

To my shafts I Her very name 

With my mother's is the same." — 

" I confess all," I replied, 

" And the glass hangs by her side, 

And the girdle 'bout her waste, 

All is Venus: save unchaste. 

But, alas ! thou seest the least 

Of her good, who is the best 

Of her sex ; but could'st thou, Love, 

Call to mind the forms, that strove 

For the apple, and those three 

Make in one, the same were she. 

For this beauty yet doth hide 

Something more than thou hast spiedo 

Outward grace weak love beguiles : 

She is Venus when she smiles, 

But she's Juno when she walks, 

And Minerva when she talks." " 

In one of the songs in Cynthia's Revels, we 
find, amidst some very pleasing imagery, the 
origin of a celebrated line in modern poetry — 

" Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, &c." 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 243 

This has not even the merit of originality, 
which is hard upon it. Ben Jonson had said 
two hundred years before, 

" Oh, I could still 
(Like melting snow upon some craggy hill) 

Drop, drop, drop, drop, 
Since nature's pride is now a wither'd daffodil/' 

His Ode to the Memory of Sir Lucius Cary 
and Sir H. Morrison, has been much admired, 
but I cannot but think it one of his most fantas- 
tical and perverse performances. 

I cannot, for instance, reconcile myself to 
such stanzas as these. 

— " Of which we priests and poets say 

Such truths as we expect for happy men, 
And there he lives with memory; and Ben 

THE STAND. 

Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went 
Himself to rest, 

Or taste a part of that full joy he meant 
To have exprest, 
In this bright asterism ; 
Where it were friendship's schism 
(Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry) 
To separate these twi — 
Lights, the Dioscori; 
And keep the one half from his Harry. 
But fate doth so alternate the design, 
While that in Heaven, this light on earth doth shine." 
R 2 



244 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

This seems as if because he cannot without 
difficulty write smoothly, he becomes rough and 
crabbed in a spirit of defiance, like those persons 
who cannot behave well in company, and affect 
rudeness to show their contempt for the opinions 
of others. 

His Episties are particularly good, equally 
full of strong sense and sound feeling. They 
shew that he was not without friends, whom he 
esteemed, and by whom he was deservedly 
esteemed in return. The controversy started 
about his character is an idle one, carried on in 
the mere spirit of contradiction, as if he were 
either made up entirely of gall, or dipped in 
" the milk of human kindness." There is no 
necessity or ground to suppose either. He was 
no doubt a sturdy, plain-spoken, honest, well- 
disposed man, inclining more to the severe than 
the amiable side of things ; but his good quali- 
ties, learning, talents, and convivial habits pre- 
ponderated over his defects of temper or manners ; 
and in a course of friendship some difference of 
character, even a little roughness or acidity, may 
relish to the palate ; and olives may be served 
up with effect as well as sweetmeats. Ben Jon- 
son, even by his quarrels and jealousies, does 
not seem to have been curst with the last and 
damning disqualification for friendship, heartless 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 245 

indifference. He was also what is understood 
by a good fellow, fond of good cheer and good 
company: and the first step for others to enjoy 
your society, is for you to enjoy theirs. If any 
one can do without the world, it is certain that 
the world can do quite as well without him. His 
" verses inviting a friend to supper," give us as 
familiar an ideaof his private habits and character 
as his Epistle to Michael Drayton, that to Sel- 
den, &c. his lines to the memory of Shakespear, 
and his noble prose eulogy on Lord Bacon, in 
his disgrace, do a favourable one, 

Among the best of these ( perhaps the very 
best) is the address to Sir Robert Wroth, which 
besides its manly moral sentiments, conveys a 
strikingly picturesque description of rural sports 
and manners at this interesting period. 

" How blest art thou, canst love the country, Wroth, 
Whether by choice, or fate, or both ! 
And though so near the city and the court, 
Art ta en with ueither's vice nor sport : 
That at great times, art no ambitious guest 
Of sheriff's dinner, or of mayor's feast. 
Nor com'st to view the better cloth of state ; 
The richer hangings, or the crown-plate ; 
Nor throng'st (when masquing is) to have a sight 
Of the short bravery of the night ; 
To view the jewels, stuffs, the pains, the wit 
There wasted, some not paid for yet ! 



246 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

But canst at home in thy securer rest, 

Live with un-bought provision blest; 

Free from proud porches or their guilded roofs, 

'Mongst lowing herds and solid hoofs : 

Along the curled woods and painted meads, 

Through which a serpent river leads 

To some cool courteous shade, which he calls his, 

And makes sleep softer than it is ! 

Or if thou list the night in watch to break, 

A-bed canst hear the loud stag speak, 

In spring oft roused for their master's sport, 

Who for it makes thy house his court ; 

Or with thy friends, the heart of all the year, 

Divid'st upon the lesser deer ; 

In autumn, at the partrich mak'st a flight, 

And giv'st thy gladder guests the sight ; 

And in the winter hunt'st the flying hare, 

More for thy exercise than fare ; 

While all that follows, their glad ears apply 

To the full greatness of the cry : 

Or hawking at the river or the bush, 

Or shooting at the greedy thrush, 

Thou dost with some delight the day out-wear, 

Although the coldest of the year ! 

The whil'st the several seasons thou hast seen 

Of flow'ry fields, of copses green, 

The mowed meadows, with the fleeced sheep, 

And feasts that either shearers keep ; 

The ripened ears yet humble in their height, 

And furrows laden with their weight ; 

The apple-harvest that doth longer last ; 

The hogs return'd home fat from mast; 

The trees cut out in log ; and those boughs made 

A fire now, that lent a shade ! 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 247 

Thus Pan and Sylvan having had their rites, 

Comus puts in for new delights; 

And fills thy open hall with mirth and cheer, 

As if in Saturn's reign it were ; 

Apollo's harp and Hermes' lyre resound, 

Nor are the Muses strangers found : 

The rout of rural folk come thronging in, 

(Their rudeness then is thought no sin) 

Thy noblest spouse affords them welcome grace ; 

And the great heroes of her race 

Sit mixt with loss of state or reverence. 

Freedom doth with degree dispense. 

The jolly wassail walks the often round, 

And in their cups their cares are drown'd : 

They think not then which side the cause shall leese , 

Nor how to get the lawyer fees. 

Such, and no other was that age of old, 

Which boasts t' have had the head of gold. 

And such since thou canst make thine own content, 

Strive, Wroth, to live long innocent. 

Let others watch in guilty arms, and stand 

The fury of a rash command, 

Go enter breaches, meet the cannon's rage, 

That they may sleep with scars in age. 

And show their feathers shot and colours torn, 

And brag that they were therefore born. 

Let this man sweat, and wrangle at the bar 

For eveiy price in every jar 

And change possessions oftener with his breath, 

Than either money, war or death : 

Let him, than hardest sires, more disinherit, 

And each where boast it as his merit, 

To blow up orphans, widows, and their states; 

And think his power doth equal Fate's, 



24S ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

Let that go heap a mass of wretched wealth, 

Purchased by rapine, worse than stealth, 

And brooding o'er it sit, with broadest eyes, 

Not doing good, scarce when he dies. 

Let thousands more go flatter vice, and win, 

By being organs to great sin, 

Get place and honour, and be glad to keep 

The secrets, that shall breake their sleep : 

And, so they ride in purple, eat in plate, 

Though poyson, think it a great fate. 

But thou, my Wroth, if I can truth apply, 

Shalt neither that, nor this envy : 

Thy peace is made; and, when man's state is well, 

'T is better, if he there can dwell. 

God wisheth none should wrack on a strange shelf; 

To him man ? s dearer than t' himself. 

And, howsoever we may think things sweet, 

He alwayes gives what he knows meet ; 

Which who can use is happy : such be thou. 

Thy morning's and thy evening's vow 

Be thanks to him, and earnest prayer, to find 

A body sound, with sounder mind • 

To do thy country service, thy self right ; 

That neither want do thee affright, 

Nor death ; but when thy latest sand is spent, 

Thou mayst think life a thing but lent." 

Of all the poetical Epistles of this period, how- 
ever, that of Daniel to the Countess of Cumber- 
land, for weight of thought and depth of feeling, 
bears the palm. The reader will not peruse this 
effusion with less interest or pleasure, from know- 
ing that it is a favourite with Mr. Wordsworth. 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 249 

" He that of such a height hath built his mind, 
And rear'd the dwelling of his thoughts so strong, 
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame 
Of his resolved pow'rs; nor all the wind 
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong 
His settled peace, or to disturb the same : 
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may 
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey ! 

And with how free an eye doth he look down 
Upon these lower regions of turmoil, 
Where all the storms of passions mainly beat 
On flesh and blood : where honour, pow'r, renown, 
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil ; 
Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet, 
As frailty doth; and only great doth seem 
To little minds, who do it so esteem. 

He looks upon the mightiest monarch's wars 
But only as on stately robberies ; 
Where evermore the fortune that prevails 
Must be the right : the ill-succeeding mars 
The fairest and the best-fac'd enterprize. 
Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails : 
Justice, he sees (as if seduced) still 
Conspires with pow'r, whose cause must not be ill. 

He sees the face of right t' appear as manifold 
As are the passions of uncertain man. 
Who puts it in all colours, all attires, 
To serve his ends, and make his courses hold. 
He sees, that let deceit work what it can, 
Plot and contrive base ways to high desires ; 
That the all-guiding Providence doth yet 
All disappoint, and mocks this smoke of wit. 

Nor is he mov'd with all the thunder-cracks 
Of tyrants' threats, or with the surly brow 



250 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

Of pow'r, that proudly sits on others' crimes : 

Charg'd with more crying sins than those he checks. 

The storms of sad confusion, that may grow 

Up in the present for the coming times, 

Appal not him ; that hath no side at all, 

But of himself, and knows the worst can fall. 
Although his heart (so near ally'd to earth) 

Cannot but pity the perplexed state 

Of troublous and distress'd mortality, 

That thus make way unto the ugly birth 

Of their own sorrows, and do still beget 
Affliction upon imbecility : 
Yet seeing thus the course of things must run, 
He looks thereon not strange, but as fore-done. 

And whilst distraught ambition compasses, 
And is encompassed ; whilst as craft deceives, 
And is deceived ; whilst man doth ransack man, 
And builds on blood, and rises by distress ; 
And th' inheritance of desolation leaves 
To great expecting hopes : he looks thereon, 
As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye, 
And bears no venture in impiety." 

Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion is a work of 
great length and of unabated freshness and vigour 
in itself, though the monotony of the subject tires 
the reader. He describes each place with the 
accuracy of a topographer, and the enthusiasm of 
a poet, as if his Muse were the very genius loci. 
His Heroical Epistles are also excellent. He 
has a few lighter pieces, but none of exquisite 
beauty or grace. His mind is a rich marly soil 
that produces an abundant harvest, and repays 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 251 

the husbandman's toil, but few flaunting flowers, 
the garden's pride, grow in it, nor any poisonous 
weeds. 

P. Fletcher's Purple Island is nothing but a 
long enigma, describing the body of a man, with 
the heart and veins, and the blood circulating 
in them, under the fantastic designation of the 
Purple Island. 

The other Poets whom I shall mention, and 
who properly belong to the age immediately fol- 
lowing, were William Brown, Carew, Crashaw, 
Herrick, and Marvel 1. Brown was a pastoral 
poet, with much natural tenderness and sweet- 
ness, and a good deal of allegorical quaintness 
and prolixity. Carew was an elegant court- 
trifler. Herrick was an amorist, with perhaps 
more fancy than feeling, though he has been 
called by some the English Anacreon. Crashaw 
was a hectic enthusiast in religion and in poetry, 
and erroneous in both. Marvell deserves to be 
remembered as a true poet as well as patriot, not 
in the best of times. — I will, however, give short 
specimens from each of these writers, that the 
reader may judge for himself; and be led by his 
own curiosity, rather than my recommendation, 
to consult the originals. Here is one by T. Carew. 

" Ask me no more where Jove bestows, 
When June is past, the fading rose : 
For in your beauties, orient deep 
These flow'rs, as in their causes, sleep. 



252 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

Ask me no more, whither do stray 
The golden atoms of the day ; 
For in pure love, Heaven did prepare 
Those powders to enrich your hair. 

Ask me no more, whither doth haste 
The nightingale, when May is past ; 
For in your sweet dividing throat 
She winters, and keeps warm her note. 

Ask me no more, where those stars light, 
That downwards fall in dead of night ; 
For in your eyes they sit, and there 
Fixed become, as in their sphere. 

Ask me no more, if east or west 
The. phoenix builds her spicy nest ; 
For unto you at last she flies, 
And in your fragrant bosom dies." 

The Hue and Cry of Love, the Epitaphs on 
Lady Mary Villiers, and the Friendly Reproof 
to Ben Jonson for his angry Farewell to the stage, 
are in the author's best manner. We may perceive, 
however, a frequent mixture of the superficial 
and common-place, with far-fetched and impro- 
bable conceits. 

Herrick is a writer who does not answer the 
expectations I had formed of him. He is in a 
manner a modern discovery, and so far has the 
freshness of antiquity about him. He is not 
trite and thread-bare. But neither is he likely 
to become so. He is a writer of epigrams, not 
of lyrics. He has point and ingenuity, but I 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 253 

think little of the spirit of love or wine. From 
his frequent allusion to pearls and rubies, one 
might take him for a lapidary instead of a poet. 
One of his pieces is entitled 

" The Rock of Rubies, and the Quarry of Pearls, 
Some ask'd me where the rubies grew ; 

And nothing I did say ; 
But with my finger pointed to 

The lips of Julia. 

Some ask'd how pearls did grow, and where ; 

Then spoke I to my girl 
To part her lips, and shew them there 

The quarrelets of pearl. 

Now this is making a petrefaction both of love 
and poetry. 

His poems, from their number and size, are 
" like the motes that play in the sun's beams ;" 
that glitter to the eye of fancy, but leave no dis- 
tinct impression on the memory. The two best 
are a translation of Anacreon, and a successful 
and spirited imitation of him. 

" The Wounded Cupid, 

Cupid, as he lay among 
Roses, by a bee was stung. 
Whereupon, in anger flying 
To his mother said thus, crying, 
Help, oh help, your boy's a dying ! 



254 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

And why, my pretty lad ? said she. 

Then, blubbering, replied he, 

A winged snake has bitten me, 

Which country-people call a bee. 

At which she smiled ; then with her hairs 

And kisses drying up his tears, 

Alas, said she, my wag ! if this 

Such a pernicious torment is ; 

Come, tell me then, how great's the smart 

Of those thou woundest with thy dart?' 

The Captive Bee, or the Little Filcber, is his 
own. 

" As Julia once a slumbering lay, 
It chanced a bee did fly that way, 
After a dew or dew-like show'r, 
To tipple freely in a flow'r. 
For some rich flow'r he took the lip 
Of Julia, and began to sip : 
But when he felt he suck'd from thence 
Honey, and in the quintessence ; 
He drank so much he scarce could stir ; 
So Julia took the pilferer. 
And thus surpris'd, as filchers use, 
He thus began himself to excuse : 
Sweet lady-flow'r ! I never brought 
Hither the least one thieving thought ; 
But taking those rare lips of your's 
For some fresh, fragrant, luscious flow'rs, 
I thought I might there take a taste, 
Where' so much syrup ran at waste : 
Besides, know this, I never sting 
The flow'r that gives me nourishing ; 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 255 

But with a kiss or thanks, do pay 
For honey that I bear away. 
This said, he laid his little scrip 
Of honey 'fore her ladyship : 
And told her, as some tears did fall, 
That that he took, and that was all. 
At which she smil'd, and bid him go, 
And take his bag, but thus much know, 
When next he came a pilfering so, 
He should from her full lips derive 
Honey enough to fiJi his hive." 

Of Marvell I have spoken with such praise, 
as appears to me his due, on another occasion : 
but the public are deaf, except to proof or to 
their own prejudices, and I will therefore give 
an example of the sweetness and power of his 
verse. 

" To his Coy Mistress. 

Had we but world enough, and time, 
This coyness, Lady, were no crime. 
We would sit down, and think which way 
To walk, and pass our long love's day. 
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side 
Should'st rubies find : I by the tide 
Of Humber would complain. I would 
Love you ten years before the flood ; 
And you should, if you please, refuse 
Till the conversion of the Jews. 
My vegetable love should grow 
Vaster than empires, and more slow 
An hundred years should go to praise 
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; 



256 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, Sec. 

Two hundred to adore each breast; 

But thirty thousand to the rest. 

An age at least to every part, 

And the last age should shew your heart. 

For, Lady, you deserve this state ; 

Nor would I love at lower rate. 

But at my back I always hear 
Time's winged chariot hurrying near : 
And yonder all before us lye 
Desarts of vast eternity. 
Thy beauty shall no more be found ; 
Nor in thy marble vault shall sound 
My echoing song : then worms shall try 
That long preserved virginity : 
And your quaint honour turn to dust ; 
And into ashes all my lust. 
The grave's a fine and private place, 
But none, I think, do there embrace. 

Now, therefore, while the youthful hue 
Sits on thy skin like morning dew, 
And while thy willing soul transpires 
At every pore with instant fires, 
Now let us sport us while we may; 
And now, like amorous birds of prey, 
Rather at once our time devour, 
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd pow'r. 
Let us roll all our strength, and all 
Our sweetness, up into one ball ; 
And tear our pleasures with rough strife, 
Thorough the iron gates of life. 
Thus, though we cannot make our sun 
Stand still, yet we will make him run." 

In Brown's Pastorals, notwithstanding the 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, <&c. 257 

weakness and prolixity of his general plan, there 
are repeated examples of single lines and pas- 
sages of extreme beauty and delicacy, both of 
sentiment and description, such as the following 
Picture of Night. 

" Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd's song, 
And silence girt the woods : no warbling tongue 
Talk'd to the echo ; Satyrs broke their dance, 
And all the upper world lay in a trance, 
Only the curled streams soft chidings kept ; 
And little gales that from the green leaf swept 
Dry summer's dust, in fearful whisp'rings stirr'd, 
As loth to waken any singing bird." 

Poetical beauties of this sort are scattered, not 
sparingly, over the green lap of nature through 
almost every page of our author's writings. 
His description of the squirrel hunted by mis- 
chievous boys, of the flowers stuck in the win- 
dows like the hues of the rainbow, and innu- 
merable others might be quoted. 

His Philarete (the fourth song of the Shep- 
herd's Pipe ) has been said to be the origin of 
Lycidas : but there is no resemblance, except 
that both are pastoral elegies for the loss of a 
friend. The Inner Temple Mask has also been 
made the foundation of Comus, with as little 
reason. But so it is : if an author is once de- 
tected in borrowing, he will be suspected of 
plagiarism ever after : and every writer that 
finds an ingenious or partial editor, will be made 

s 



253 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, Sec. 

to set up his claim of originality against him. 
A more serious charge of this kind has been 
urged against the principal character in Para- 
dise Lost (that of Satan), which is said to have 
been taken from Marino, an Italian poet. Of 
this, we may be able to form some judgment, by 
a comparison with Crashaw's translation of Ma- 
rino's Sospetto d'Herode. The description of 
Satan alluded to, is given in the following stanzas : 

" Below the bottom of the great abyss, 

There where one centre reconciles all things, 
The world's profound heart pants ; there placed is 
Mischief's old master ; close about him clings 
A curl'd knot of embracing snakes, that kiss 
His correspondent cheeks ; these loathsome strings 
Hold the perverse prince in eternal ties 
Fast bound, since first he forfeited the skies. 

The judge of torments, and the king of tears, 
He fills a burnish'd throne of quenchless fire ; 
And for his old fair robes of light, he wears 
A gloomy mantle of dark flames ; the tire 
That crowns his hated head, on high appears ; 
Where seven tall horns (his empire's pride) aspire ; 
And to make up hell's majesty, each horn 
Seven crested hydras horribly adorn. 

His eyes, the sullen dens of death and night, 
Startle the dull air with a dismal red; 
Such his fell glances as the fatal light 
Of staring comets, that look kingdoms dead. 
From his black nostrils and blue lips, in spite 
Of hell's own stink, a worser stench is spread. 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, <fce. 259 

His breath hell's lightning is ; and each deep groan 
Disdains to think that heaven thunders alone. 

His flaming eyes' dire exhalation 

Unto a dreadful pile gives fiery breath ; 

Whose unconsuni'd consumption preys upon 

The never-dying life of a long death. 

In this sad house of slow destruction 

(His shop of flames) he fries himself, beneath 

A mass of woes ; his teeth for torment gnash, 

While his steel sides sound with his tail's strong lash." 

This portrait of monkish superstition does not 
equal the grandeur of Milton's description. 

" His form had not yet lost 

All her original brightness, nor appear' d 
Less than archangel ruin'd and the excess 
Of glory obscured." 

Milton has got rid of the horns and tail, the 
vulgar and physical insignia of the devil, and 
clothed him with other greater and intellectual 
terrors, reconciling beauty and sublimity, and 
converting the grotesque and deformed into the 
ideal and classical. Certainly Milton's mind 
rose superior to all others in this respect, on the 
outstretched wings of philosophic contemplation, 
in not confounding the depravity of the will 
with physical distortion, or supposing that the 
distinctions of good and evil were only to be sub-* 

s2 



2fr ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, *c. 

jected to the gross ordeal of the senses. In the 
subsequent stanzas, we however find the traces 
of some of Milton's boldest imagery, though its 
effect is injured by the incongruous mixture 
above stated. 

" Struck with these great concurrences of things*, 
Symptoms so deadly unto death and him ; 
Fain would he have forgot what fatal strings 
Eternally bind each rebellious limb. 
He shook himself, and spread his spacious wings, 
Which like two bosom'd sailsf embrace the dim 
Air, with a dismal shade, but all in vain ; 
Of sturdy adamant is his strong chain. 

While thus heavVs highest counsels, by the low 
Footsteps of their effects, he traced too well, 
He tost his troubled eyes, embers that glow 
Now with new rage, and wax too hot for hell. 
With his foul claws he fenced his furrow'd brow, 
And gave a ghastly shriek, whose horrid yell 
Ran trembling through the hollow vaults of night." 

The poet adds— 

" The while his twisted tail he knaw'd for spite." 

There is no keeping in this. This action of 
meanness and mere vulgar spite, common to the 
most contemptible creatures, takes away from 

* Alluding to the fulfilment of the prophecies and the birth 
of the Messiah. 
t " He spreads his sail-broad vans/'— Par. Lost, b. ii. 1. 927. 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 26l 

the terror and power just ascribed to the prince 
of Hell, and implied in the nature of the conse- 
quences attributed to his every movement of 
mind or body. Satan's soliloquy to himself is 
more beautiful and more in character at the same 
time. 

" Art thou not Lucifer] he to whom the droves 
Of stars that gild the morn in charge were given 1 
The nimblest of the lightning-winged loves? 
The fairest and the first-born smile of Heav'n 2 
Look in what pomp the mistress planet moves, 
Reverently circled by the lesser seven : 
Such and so rich the flames that from thine eyes 
Opprest the common people of the skies ? 
Ah ! wretch ! what boots it to cast back thine eyes 
Where dawning hope no beam of comfort shews T &c. 

This is true beauty and true sublimity : it is 
also true pathos and morality: for it interests 
the mind, and affects it powerfully with the idea 
of glory tarnished, and happiness forfeited with 
the loss of virtue : but from the horns and tail of 
the brute-demon, imagination cannot reascend 
to the Son of the morning, nor be dejected by the 
transition from weal to woe, which it cannot, 
without a violent effort, picture to itself. 

In our author's account of Cruelty, the chief 
minister of Satan, there is also a considerable 
approach to Milton's description of Death and 
Sin, the portress of hell-gates. 



262 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, & c . 

" Thrice howl'd the caves of night, and thrice the sound, 
Thundering upon the banks of those black lakes, 
Rung through the hollow vaults of hell profound : 
At last her listening ears the noise o'ertakes, 
She lifts her sooty lamps, and looking round, 
A general hiss*, from the whole tire of snakes 
Rebounding through hell's inmost caverns came, 
In answer to her formidable name. 

'Mongst all the palaces in heirs command, 
No one so merciless as this of hers, 
The adamantine doors forever stand 
Impenetrable, both to prayers and tears. 
The walls' inexorable steel, no hand 
Of time, or teeth of hungry ruin fears." 

On the whole, this poem, though Milton has 
undoubtedly availed himself of many ideas and 
passages in it, raises instead of lowering our 
conception of him, by shewing how much more 
he added to it than he has taken from it. 

Crashaw's translation of Strada's description 
of the Contention between a nightingale and a 
musician, is elaborate and spirited, but not 
equal to Ford's version of the same story in his 
Lover's Melancholy. One line may serve as a 
specimen of delicate quaintness, and of Crashaw's 
style in general. 

" And with a quavering coyness tastes the strings." 

* See Satan's reception on his return to Pandemonium, in 
book x. of Paradise Lost. 



ON iMISCELLANEOUS POEMS, <fcc. 263 

Sir Philip Sidney is a writer for whom I can- 
not acquire a taste. As Mr. Burke said, " he 
could not love the French Republic" — so I may 
say, that I cannot love the Countess of Pem- 
broke's Arcadia, with all my good-will to it. 
It will not do for me, however, to imitate the 
summary petulance of the epigrammatist. 

" The reason why I cannot tell, 
But I don't like you, Dr. Fell." 

I must give my reasons, " on compulsion,'' 
for not speaking well of a person like Sir Philip 
Sidney— 

" The soldier's, scholar's, courtier's eye, tongue, sword, 
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form ;" 

the splendour of whose personal accomplish- 
ments, and of whose wide-spread fame was, in 
his life time, 

" Like a gate of steel, 



Fronting the sun, that renders back 
His figure and his heat" — 

a writer too who was universally read and enthu- 
siastically admired for a century after his death, 
and who has been admired with scarce less en- 
thusiastic, but with a more distant homage, for 
another century, after ceasing to be read. 

We have lost the art of reading, or the pri- 



26'4 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

vilege of writing, voluminously, since the days 
of Addison. Learning no longer weaves the in- 
terminable page with patient drudgery, nor 
ignorance pores over it with implicit faith. A* 
authors multiply in number, books diminish in 
size; we cannot now, as formerly, swallow 
libraries whole in a single folio: solid quarto 
has given place to slender duodecimo, and the 
dingy letter-press contracts its dimensions, and 
retreats before the white, unsullied, faultless 
margin. Modern authorship is become a species 
of stenography: we contrive even to read by 
proxy. We skim the cream of prose without 
any trouble ; we get at the quintessence of poetry 
without loss of time. The staple commodity, 
the coarse, heavy, dirty, unwieldy bullion of 
books is driven out of the market of learning, 
and the intercourse of the literary world is car- 
ried on, and the credit of the great capitalists 
sustained by the flimsy circulating medium of 
magazines and reviews. Those who are chiefly 
concerned in catering for the taste of others, and 
serving up critical opinions in a compendious, 
elegant, and portable form, are not forgetful of 
themselves : they are not scrupulously solicitous, 
idly inquisitive about the real merits, the bona 
fide contents of the works they are deputed to 
appraise and value, any more than the reading 
public who employ them. They look no farther 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 265 

for the contents of the work than the title page, 
and pronounce a peremptory decision on its merits 
or defects by a glance at the name and party of 
the writer. This state of polite letters seems to 
admit of improvement in only one respect, which 
is to go a step farther, and write for the amuse- 
ment and edification of the world, accounts of 
works that were never either written or read at 
all, and to cry up or abuse the authors by name, 
though they have no existence but in the critic's 
invention. This would save a great deal of 
labour in vain : anonymous critics might pounce 
upon the defenceless heads of fictitious candi- 
dates for fame and bread ; reviews, from being 
novels founded upon facts, would aspire to be 
pure romances ; and we should arrive at the beau 
ideal of a commonwealth of letters, at the eutha- 
nasia of thought, and Millennium of criticism ! 

At the time that Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia 
was written, those middle men, the critics, were 
not known. The author and reader came into 
immediate contact, and seemed never tired of 
each other's company. We are more fastidious 
and dissipated: the effeminacy of moderm taste 
would, I am afraid, shrink back affrighted at 
the formidable sight of this once popular work, 
which is about as long (horresco ref evens ! ) as 
all Walter Scott's novels put together ; but be- 



266 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

sides its size and appearance, it has, I think, 
other defects of a more intrinsic and insuperable 
nature. It is to me one of the greatest monu- 
ments of the abuse of intellectual power upon 
record. It puts one in mind of the court dresses 
and preposterous fashions of the time which are 
grown obsolete and disgusting. It is not ro- 
mantic, but scholastic ; not poetry, but casuistry ; 
not nature, but art, and the worst sort of art, 
which thinks it can do better than nature. Of 
the number of fine things that are constantly pass- 
ing through the author's mind, there is hardly 
one that he has not contrived to spoil, and to 
spoil purposely and maliciously, in order to 
aggrandize our idea of himself. Out of ^\e 
hundred folio pages, there are hardly, I conceive, 
half a dozen sentences expressed simply and di- 
rectly, with the sincere desire to convey the 
image implied, and without a systematic inter- 
polation of the wit, learning, ingenuity, wisdom 
and everlasting impertinence of the writer, so as 
to disguise the object, instead of displaying it in 
its true colours and real proportions. Every page 
is " with centric and eccentric scribbled o'er f 1 
his Muse is tattooed and tricked out like an Indian 
goddess. He writes a court-hand, with flourishes 
like a schoolmaster ; his figures are wrought in 
chain-stitch. All his thoughts are forced and 
painful births, and may be said to be delivered 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 267 

by the Ccesarean operation. At last, they be- 
come distorted and ricketty in themselves; and 
before they have been cramped and twisted and 
swaddled into lifelessness and deformity. Ima- 
gine a writer to have great natural talents, great 
powers of memory and invention, an eye for 
nature, a knowledge of the passions, much learn- 
ing and equal industry; but that he is so full of 
a consiousness of all this, and so determined to 
make the reader conscious of it at every step, that 
he becomes a complete intellectual coxcomb or 
nearly so ; — that he never lets a casual observa- 
tion pass without perplexing it w r ith an endless, 
running commentary, that he never states a feel- 
ing without so many circumambages, without 
so many interlineations and parenthetical remarks 
on all that can be said for it, and anticipations 
of all that can be said against it, and that he 
never mentions a fact without giving so many 
circumstances and conjuring up so many things 
that it is like or not like, that you lose the main 
clue of the story in its infinite ramifications and 
intersections ; and we may form some faint idea 
of the Conntess of Pembroke's Arcadia, which is 
spun with great labour out of the author's brains, 
and hangs like a huge cobweb over the face of 
nature! This is not, as far as I can judge, an 
exaggerated description : but as near the truth 
as I can make it. The proofs are not far to 



268 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

to seek. Take the first sentence, or open the 
volume any where and read. I will, however, 
take one of the most beautiful passages near the 
beginning, to shew how the subject-matter, of 
which the noblest use might have been made, is 
disfigured by the affectation of the style, and the 
importunate and vain activity of the writer's 
mind. The passage I allude to, is the cele- 
brated description of Arcadia. 

" So that the third day after, in the time that the morning 
did strew roses and violets in the heavenly floor against the 
coming of the sun, the nightingales (striving one with the other 
which could in most dainty variety recount their wrong-caused 
sorrow) made them put off their sleep, and rising from under 
a tree (which that night had been their pavilion) they went on 
their journey, which by and by welcomed Musidorus' eyes 
(wearied with the wasted soil of Laconia) with welcome pros- 
pects. There were hills which garnished their proud heights 
with stately trees : humble valleys whose base estate seemed 
comforted with the refreshing of silver rivers ; meadows ena- 
melled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers ; thickets, which 
being lined with most pleasant shade were witnessed so to, by 
the cheerful disposition of many well-tuned birds ; each pas- 
ture stored with sheep feeding with sober security, while the 
pretty lambs with bleating oratory craved the dam's comfort; 
here a shepherd's boy piping, as though he should never be 
old : there a young shepherdess knitting, and withal singing, 
and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and 
her hands kept time to her voice-music. As for the houses of 
the country (for many houses came undet their eye) they were 
scattered, no two being one by the other, and yet not so far 
©ff, as that it barred mutual succour ; a shew, as it were, of 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, *c. 2<J9 

an accompaniable solitariness, and of a civil wildness. I pray 
you, said Musidorus, (then first unsealing his long-silent lips) 
what countries be these we pass through, which are so divers 
in shew, the one wanting no store, the other having no store 
but of want. The country, answered Claius, where you were 
cast ashore, and now are past through is Laconia : but this 
country (where you now set your foot) is Arcadia." 

One would think the very name might have 
lulled his senses to delightful repose in some 
still, lonely valley, and have laid the restless 
spirit of Gothic quaintress, witticism, and con- 
ceit in the lap of classic elegance and pastoral 
simplicity. Here are images too of touching 
beauty and everlasting truth that needed nothing 
but to be simply and nakedly expressed to have 
made a picture equal ( nay superior) to the alle- 
gorical representation of the Four Seasons of 
Life by Georgioni. But no ! He cannot let his 
imagination or that of the reader dwell for a 
moment on the beauty or power of the real ob- 
ject. He thinks nothing is done, unless it is his 
doing. He must officiously and gratuitously in- 
terpose between you and the subject as the Cice- 
rone of Nature, distracting the eye and the mind 
by continual uncalled-for interruptions, analysing, 
dissecting, disjointing, murdering every thing, 
and reading a pragmatical, self-sufficient lecture 
over the dead body of nature. The moving spring 
of his mind is not sensibility or imagination, but 






270 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, <fcc. 

dry, literal, unceasing craving after intellectual 
excitement, which is indifferent to pleasure or 
pain, to beauty or deformity, and likes to owe every 
thing to its own perverse efforts rather than the 
sense of power in other things. It constantly in- 
terferes to perplex and neutralise. It never leaves 
the mind in a wise passiveness. In the infancy 
of taste, the fro ward pupils of art took nature to 
pieces, as spoiled children do a watch, to see 
what was in it. After taking it to pieces they 
could not, with all their cunning, put it toge- 
ther again, so as to restore circulation to the 
heart, or its living hue to the face ! The quaint 
and pedantic style here objected to was not how- 
ever the natural growth of untutored fancy, but 
an artificial excrescence transferred from logic 
and rhetoric to poetry. It was not owing to the 
excess of imagination* but of the want of it, that 
is, to the predominance of the mere understand- 
ing or dialectic faculty over the imaginative 
and the sensitive. It is in fact poetry degenerat- 
ing at every step into prose, sentiment entangling 
itself in a controversy, from the habitual leaven 
of polemics and casuistry in the writer's mind. 
The poet insists upon matters of fact from the 
beauty or grandeur that accompanies them ; our 
prose-poet insists upon them because they are 
matters of fact, and buries the beauty and gran- 
deur in a heap of common rubbish, " like two 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 2/1 

grains of wheat in a bushel of chaff." The true 
poet illustrates for ornament or use : the fantas- 
tic pretender, only because he is not easy till he 
can translate every thing out of itself into some- 
thing else. Imagination consists in enriching 
one idea by another, which has the same feeling 
or set of associations belonging to it in a higher 
or more striking degree ; the quaint or scholastic 
style consists in comparing one thing to another 
by the mere process of abstraction, and the more 
forced and naked the comparison, the less of har- 
mony or congruity there is in it, the more wire- 
drawn and ambiguous the link of generalisation 
by which objects are brought together, the greater 
is the triumph of the false and fanciful style. 
There was a marked instance of the difference 
in some lines from Ben Jonson which I have 
above quoted, and which, as they are alternate 
examples of the extremes of both in the same au- 
thor and in the same short poem, there can be 
nothing invidious in giving. In conveying an 
idea of female softness and sweetness, he asks — 

" Have you felt the wool of the beaver, 
Or swan's down ever ? 
Or smelt of the bud of the briar, 
Or the nard in the firel" 

Now " the swan's down" is a striking and 
beautiful image of the most delicate and yield- 



272 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, Arc. 

ing softness ; but we have no associations of a 
pleasing sort with the wool of the beaver. The 
comparison is dry, hard, and barren of effect. It 
may establish the matter of fact, but detracts 
from and impairs the sentiment. The smell of 
"the bud of the briar" is a double-distilled es- 
sence of sweetness : besides, there are all the 
other concomitant ideas of youth, beauty, and 
blushing modesty, which blend with and heighten 
the immediate feeling : but the poetical reader 
was not bound to know even what nard is (it is 
merely a learned substance, a non-entity to the 
imagination) nor whether it has a fragrant or 
disagreeable scent when thrown into the fire, till 
Ben Jonson went out of his way to give him this 
pedantic piece of information. It is a mere mat- 
ter of fact or of experiment ; and while the expe- 
riment is making in reality or fancy, the senti- 
ment stands still; or even taking it for granted 
in the literal and scientific sense, we are where 
we were ; it does not enhance the passion to be 
expressed : we have no love for the smell of nard 
in the fire, but we have an old, along-cherished 
one, from infancy, for the bud of the briar. Sen- 
timent, as Mr. Burke said of nobility, is a thing 
of inveterate prejudice, and cannot be created, as 
some people (learned and unlearned) are in- 
clined to suppose, out of fancy or out of any 
thing by the wit of man. The artificial and na- 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 373 

tural style do not alternate in this way in the Ar- 
cadia: the one is but the Helot, the eyeless 
drudge of the other. Thus even in the above 
passage, which is comparatively beautiful and 
simple in its general structure, we have " the 
bleating oratory" of lambs, as if any thing could 
be more unlike oratory than the bleating of 
lambs ; we have a young shepherdess knitting, 
whose hands keep time not to her voice, but to 
her " voice-music, ' which introduces a foreign 
and questionable distinction, merely to perplex 
the subject ; we have meadows enamelled w r ith 
all sorts of " eye-pleasing flowers," as if it were 
necessary to inform the reader that flowers 
pleased the eye, or as if they did not please any 
other sense: we have valleys refreshed "" with 
silver streams," an epithet that has nothing to 
do with the refreshment here spoken of: we have 
" an accompaniable solitariness and a civil wild- 
ness," which are a pair of very laboured antithe- 
ses ; in fine, we have " want of store, and store 
of want." 

Again, the passage describing the shipwreck 
of Pyrochles, has been much and deservedly ad- 
mired : yet it is not free from the same inherent 
faults. 

" But a little way off they saw the mast (of the vessel) 
whose proud height now lay along, like a widow having lost 

T 



Til ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

her mate, of whom she held her honour;" [This needed ex- 
planation] " but upon the mast they saw a young man (at 
least if it were a man) bearing show of about eighteen years of 
age, who sat (as on horseback) having nothing upon hiin but 
his shirt, which being wrought with blue silk and gold, had a 
kind of resemblance to the sea" [This is a sort of alliteration 
in natural history] " on which the sun (then near his western 
home) did shoot some of his beams. His hair, (which the 
young men of Greece used to wear very long) was stirred up 
and down with the wind, which seemed to have a sport to 
play with it, as the sea had to kiss his feet ; himself full of 
admirable beauty, set forth by the strangeness both of his seat 
and gesture; for holding his head up full of unmoved majesty, 
he held a sword aloft with his fair arm, which often he waved 
about his crown, as though he would threaten the world in that 
extremity." 

If the original sin of alliteration, antithesis, 
and metaphysical conceit could be weeded out 
of this passage, there is hardly a more heroic one 
to be found in prose or poetry. 

Here is one more passage marred in the mak- 
ing. A shepherd is supposed to say of his mis- 
tress, 

" Certainly, as her eyelids are more pleasant to behold, than 
two white kids climbing up a fair tree and browsing on his 
tenderest branches, and yet are nothing, compared to the 
day-shiniri£ stars contained in them; and as her breath is 
more sweet than a gentle south-west wind, which comes creep- 
ing over flowery fields and shadowed waters in the extreme 
heat of summer ; and yet is nothing compared to the honey- 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 275 

flowing speech that breath doth carry ; no more all that our 
eyes can see of her (though when they have seen her, what 
else they shall ever see is but dry stubble after clover grass) 
is to be matched with the flock of unspeakable virtues, laid 
up delightfully in that besi-builded fold." 

Now here are images of singular beauty and of 
Eastern originality and daring, followed up with 
enigmatical or unmeaning common-places, be- 
cause he never knows when to leave off, and 
thinks he can never be too wise or too dull for 
his reader. He loads his prose Pegasus, like a 
pack-horse, with all that comes and with a num- 
ber of little trifling circumstances, that fall off, 
and you are obliged to stop to pick them up by the 
way. He cannot give his imagination a moment's 
pause, thinks nothing done, while any thing re- 
mains to do, and exhausts nearly all that can be 
said upon a subject, whether good, bad, or in- 
different. The above passages are taken from 
the beginning of the Arcadia, when the author's 
style was hardly yet formed. The following is 
a less favourable, but fairer specimen of the 
work. It is the model of a love-letter, and is 
only longer than that of Adriano de Armada, in 
Love's Labour Lost. 

" Most blessed paper, which shalt kiss that hand, whereto 
all blessedness is in nature a servant, do not yet disdain to 
carry with thee the woeful words of a miser now despairing : 
neither be afraid to appear before her, bearing the base title 

T 2 



W6 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

of the sender. For no sooner shall that divine hand touch 
thee, but that thy baseness shall be turned to most high pre- 
ferment. Therefore mourn boldly my ink: for while she 
looks upon you, your blackness will shine : cry out boldly my 
lamentation, for while she reads you, your cries will be 
music. Say then (O happy messenger of a most unhappy 
message) that the too soon born and too late dying creature, 
which dares not speak, no, not look, no, not scarcely think 
(as from his miserable self unto her heavenly highness), only 
presumes to desire thee (in the time that her eyes and voice 
do exalt thee) to say, and in this manner to say, not from 
him, oh no, that were not fit, but of him, thus much unto her 
sacred judgment. O you, the only honour to women, to men the 
only admiration, you that being armed by love, defy him that 
armed you, in this high estate wherein you have placed me" 
[i. e. the letter] " yet let me remember him to whom I am 
bound for bringing me to your presence : and let me remem- 
ber him, who (since he is yours, how mean soever he be) it 
is reason you have an account of him. The wretch (yet your 
wretch) though with languishing steps runs fast to his grave; 
and will you suffer a temple (how poorly built soever, but 
yet a temple of your deity) to be rased ? But he dyeth : it is 
most true, he dyeth : and he in whom you live, to obey you, 
dyeth. Whereof though he plain, he doth not complain : for 
it is a harm, but no wrong, which he hath received. He 
dies, because in woeful language all his senses tell him, that 
such is your pleasure : for if you will not that he live, alas, 
alas, what followeth, what followeth of the most ruined 
Dorus, but his end ] End, then, evil-destined Dorus, end ; and 
end thou woeful letter, end : for it sufficeth her wisdom to 
know, that her heavenly will shall be accomplished." 

Lib.ii. p. 117. 

This style relishes neither of the lover nor the 



ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 277 

poet. Nine-tenths of the work are written in 
this manner. It is in the very manner of those 
books of gallantry and chivalry, which, with the 
labyrinths of their style, and " the reason of their 
unreasonableness," turned the fine intellects of 
the Knight of La Mancha. In a word (and not 
to speak it profanely), the Arcadia is a riddle, 
a rebus, an acrostic in folio: it contains about 
4000 far-fetched similes, and 6000 impractica- 
ble dilemmas, about 10,000 reasons for doing 
nothing at all, and as many more against it ; 
numberless alliterations, puns, questions and 
commands, and other figures of rhetoric ; about 
a score good passages, that one may turn to with 
pleasure, and the most involved, irksome, im- 
progressive, and heteroclite subject that ever 
was chosen to exercise the pen or patience of 
man. It no longer adorns the toilette or lies 
upon the pillow of Maids of Honour and Peeresses 
in their own right (the Pamelas and Philo- 
cleas of a later age), but remains upon the 
shelves of the libraries of the curious in long 
works and great names, a monument to shew 
that the author was one of the ablest men and 
worst writers of the age of Elizabeth. 

c 

His Sonnets, inlaid in the Arcadia, are jejune, 
far-fetched and frigid. I shall select only one 
that has been much commended. It is to the 



278 ON MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, &c. 

High Way where his mistress had passed, a 
strange subject, but not unsuitable to the au- 
thor's genius. 

" High-way, since you my chief Parnassus be, 
And that my Muse (to some ears not unsweet) 
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet 
More oft than to a chamber melody ; 
Now blessed you bear onward blessed me 
To her, where I my heart safe left shall meet; 
My Muse, and I must you of duty greet 
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully. 
Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed, 
By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot ; 
Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed ; 
And that you know, I envy you no lot 
Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss, 
Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss." 

The answer of the High-way has not been 
preserved, but the sincerity of this appeal must no 
doubt have moved the stocks and stones to rise 
and sympathise. His Defence of Poetry is his 
most readable performance ; there he is quite at 
home, in a sort of special pleader's office, where 
his ingenuity, scholastic subtlety, and tenacious- 
ness in argument stand him in good stead ; and 
he brings off poetry with flying colours ; for he 
was a man of wit, of sense, and learning, though 
not a poet of true taste or unsophisticated genius. 



LECTURE VII. 

CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS — COM- 
PARED AS TO STYLE WITH SIR THOMAS BROWN 
AND JEREMY TAYLOR. 



Lord Bacon has been called (and justly) 
one of the wisest of mankind. The word wisdom 
characterises him more than any other. It was 
not that he did so much himself to advance the 
knowledge of man or nature, as that he saw 
what others had done to advance it, and what 
was still wanting to its full accomplishment. 
He stood upon the high 'vantage ground of ge- 
nius and learning ; and traced, " as in a map 
the voyager his course," the long devious march 
of human intellect, its elevations and depres- 
sions, its windings and its errors. He had a 
" large discourse of reason, looking before and 
after." He had made an exact and extensive 
survey of human acquirements : he took the 
gauge and meter, the depths and soundings of 
the human capacity. He was master of the com- 
parative anatomy of the mind of man, of the 
balance of power among the different faculties. 



2S0 CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS. 

He had thoroughly investigated and carefully 
registered the steps and processes of his own 
thoughts, with their irregularities and failures, 
their liabilities to wrong conclusions, either from 
the difficulties of the subject, or from moral 
causes, from prejudice, indolence, vanity, from 
conscious strength or weakness ; and he applied 
this self-knowledge on a mighty scale to the 
general advances or retrograde movements of 
the aggregate intellect of the world. He knew 
well what the goal and crown of moral and in- 
tellectual power was, how far men had fallen 
short of it, and how they came to miss it. He 
had an instantaneous perception of the quantity 
of truth or good in any given system ; and of the 
analogy of any given result or principle to others 
of the same kind scattered through nature or his- 
tory. His observations take in a larger range, 
have more profundity from the fineness of his 
tact, and more comprehension from the extent of 
his knowledge, along the line of which his 
imagination ran with equal celerity and cer- 
tainty, than any other person's, whose writings 
I know. He however seized upon these results, 
rather by intuition than by inference : he knew 
them in their mixed modes, and combined effects 
rather than by abstraction or analysis, as he ex- 
plains them to others, not by resolving them into 
their component parts and elementary principles. 



CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS. 2S1 

so much as by illustrations drawn from other 
things operating in like manner, and produc- 
ing similar results ; or as he himself has finely 
expressed it, "by the same footsteps of nature tread- 
ing or printing upon several subjects or matters." 
He had great sagacity of observation, solidity 
of judgment and scope of fancy; in this resem- 
bling Plato and Burke, that he was a popular 
philosopher and a philosophical declaimer. His 
writings have the gravity of prose with the fer- 
vour and vividness of poetry. His sayings have 
the effect of axioms, are at once striking and 
self-evident. He views objects from the great- 
est height, and his reflections acquire a sublimity 
in proportion to their profundity, as in deep 
wells of water we see the sparkling of the highest 
fixed stars. The chain of thought reaches to the 
centre, and ascends the brightest heaven of 
invention. Reason in him works like an instinct : 
and his slightest suggestions carry the force of 
conviction. His opinions are judicial. His in- 
duction of particulars is alike wonderful for 
learning and vivacity, for curiosity and dignity, 
and an all-pervading intellect binds the whole 
together in a graceful and pleasing form. His style 
is equally sharp and sweet, flowing and pithy, con- 
densed and expansive, expressing volumes in a 
sentence, or amplifying a single thought into 
pages of rich, glowing, and delightful eloquence. 



282 CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS. 

He had great liberality from seeing the various as- 
pects of things (there was nothing bigotted or 
intolerant or exclusive about him) and yet he had 
firmness and decision from feeling their weight 
and consequences. His character was then an 
amazing insight into the limits of human know- 
ledge and acquaintance with the landmarks of 
human intellect, so as to trace its past history or 
point out the path to future inquirers, but when 
he quits the ground of contemplation of what 
others have done or left undone to project him- 
self into future discoveries, he becomes quaint 
and fantastic, instead of original. His strength 
was in reflection, not in production : he was the 
surveyor, not the builder of the fabric of science. 
He had not strictly the constructive faculty. He 
was the principal pioneer in the march of mo- 
dern philosophy, and has completed the educa- 
tion and discipline of the mind for the acquisi- 
tion of truth, by explaining all the impediments 
or furtherances that can be applied to it or clear- 
ed out of its way. In a word, he was one of the 
greatest men this country has to boast, and his 
name deserves to stand, where it is generally 
placed, by tjie side of those of our greatest writers, 
whether we consider the variety, the strength or 
splendour of his faculties, for ornament or use. 

His Advancement of Learning is his greatest 
work; and next to that, I like the Essays; for 



CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS. 283 

the Novum Organum is more laboured and less 
effectual than it might be. I shall give a few 
instances from the first of these chiefly, to ex- 
plain the scope of the above remarks. 

The Advancement of Learning is dedicated 
to James I. and he there observes, with a mix- 
ture of truth and flattery, which looks very much 
like a bold irony, 

" I am well assured that this which I shall say is no amplifi- 
cation at all, but a positive and measured truth ; which is, 
that there hath not been, since Christ's time, any king or tem- 
poral monarch, which hath been so learned in all literature 
and erudition, divine and human (as your majesty). For let 
a man seriously and diligently revolve and peruse the succes- 
sion of the Emperours of Rome, of which Caesar the Dictator, 
who lived some years before Christ, and Marcus Antoninus 
were the best-learned ; and so descend to the Emperours of 
Grecia, or of the West, and then to the lines of France, 
Spain, England, Scotland, and the rest, and he shall find 
his judgment is truly made. For it seemeth much in a 
king, if by the compendious extractions of other men's wits 
and labour, he can take hold of any superficial ornaments 
and shews of learning, or if he countenance and prefer learn- 
ing and learned men: but to drink indeed of the true fountain 
of learning, nay, to have such a fountain of learning in him- 
self, in a king, and in a king born, is almost a miracle." 

To any one less wrapped up in self-sufficiency 
than James, the rule would have been more 
staggering than the exception could have been 
gratifying. But Bacon was a sort of prose-lau- 



284 CHARACTER OF LORD BACONS WORKS. 

gratifying. But Bacon was a sort of prose-lau- 
reat to the reigning prince, and his loyalty had 
never been suspected. 

In recommending learned men as fit counsel- 
lors in a state, he thus points out the deficiencies 
of the mere empiric or man of business in not 
being provided against uncommon emergencies. 
— " Neither," he says, " can the experience of 
one man's life furnish examples and precedents 
for the events of one man's life. For as it hap- 
peneth sometimes, that the grand-child, or other 
descendant, resembleth the ancestor more than 
the son : so many times occurrences of present 
times may sort better with ancient examples, 
than with those of the latter or immediate times ; 
and lastly, the wit of one man can no more coun- 
tervail learning, than one man's means can hold 
way with a common purse." — This is finely put. 
It might be added, on the other hand, by way of 
caution, that neither can the wit or opinion of 
one learned man set itself up, as it sometimes 
does, in opposition to the common sense or ex- 
perience of mankind. 

When he goes on^to vindicate"the superiority 
of the scholar over the mere politician in dis- 
interestedness and inflexibility of principle, by 
arguing ingeniously enough — " The corrupter 
sort of mere politiques, that have not their 



CHARACTER OF LORD BACONS WORKS. 235 

thoughts established by learning in the love and 
apprehension of duty, nor never look abroad 
into universality, do refer all things to themselves, 
and thrust themselves into the centre of the 
world, as if all times should meet in them and 
their fortunes, never caring in all tempests what 
becomes of the ship of estates, so they may save 
themselves in the cock-boat of their own fortune, 
whereas men that feel the weight of duty, and 
know the limits of self-love, use to make good 
their places and duties, though with peril" — 
I can only wish that the practice were as con- 
stant as the theory is plausible, or that the time 
gave evidence of as much stability and sincerity 
of principle in well-educated minds as it does of 
versatility and gross egotism in self-taught men. 
I need not give the instances, " they will receive" 
(in our author's phrase) " an open allowance:" 
but I am afraid that neither habits of abstraction 
nor the want of them will entirely exempt men 
from a bias to their own interest ; that it is nei- 
ther learning nor ignorance that thrusts us into 
the centre of our own little world, but that it is 
nature that has put a man there ! 

His character of the school- men is perhaps the 
finest philosophical sketch that ever was drawn. 
After observing that there are " two marks and 
badges of suspected and falsified science; the 



286 CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS. 

one, the novelty or strangeness of terms, the 
other the strictness of positions, which of neces- 
sity doth induce oppositions, and so questions 
and altercations" — he proceeds — " Surely like 
as many substances in nature which are solid, do 
putrify and corrupt into worms : so it is the pro- 
perty of good and sound knowledge to putrify and 
dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwhole- 
some, and (as I may term them) vermiculate 
questions ; which have indeed a kind of quick- 
ness and life of spirit, but no soundness of mat- 
ter or goodness of quality. This kind of dege- 
nerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the 
school-men , who having sharp and strong wits, 
and abundance of leisure, and small variety of 
reading ; but their wits being shut up in the cells 
of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dicta- 
tor) as their persons were shut up in the cells 
of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little 
history, either of nature or time, did out of no 
great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation 
of wit, spin out unto us those laborious webs of 
learning, which are extant in their books. For 
the wit and mind of man, if it work upon mat- 
ter, which is the contemplation of the creatures 
of God, worketh according to the stuff, and is 
limited thereby: but if it work upon itself, as the 
spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and 
brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admi- 



CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS. 287 

rable for the fineness of thread and work, but of 
no substance or profit.''* 

And a little further on, he adds — " Notwith- 
standing, certain it is, that if those school-men 
to their great thirst of truth and unwearied travel 
of wit, had joined variety and universality of 
reading and contemplation, they had proved ex- 
cellent lights, to the great advancement of all learn- 
ing and knowledge; but as they are, they are 
great undertakers indeed, and fierce with dark 
keeping. But as in the inquiry of the divine truth, 
their pride inclined to leave the oracle of God's 
word, and to varnish in the mixture of their own 
inventions; so in the inquisition of nature, they 
ever left the oracle of God's works, and adored 
the deceiving and deformed images, which the 
unequal mirror of their own minds, or a few re- 
ceived authors or principles did represent unto 
them." 

One of his acutest (I might have said pro- 
foundest) remarks relates to the near connection 
between deceiving and being deceived. Vo- 
lumes might be written in explanation of it, 
" This vice therefore," he says, " brancheth itself 
into two sorts ; delight in deceiving, and aptness 
to be deceived, imposture and credulity ; which 
although they appear to be of a diverse nature, 



288 CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS. 

the one seeming to proceed of cunning, and the 
other of simplicity, yet certainly they do for the 
most part concur. For as the verse noteth Per- 
contatoremfugito, nam garrulus idem est; an in- 
quisitive man is a prattler : so upon the like rea- 
son, a credulous man is a deceiver ; as we see it 
in fame, that he that will easily believe rumours, 
will as easily augment rumours, and add some- 
what to them of his own, which Tacitus wisely 
noteth, when he saith, Fingunt simul credimt- 
que, so great an affinity hath fiction and belief." 

I proceed to his account of the causes of error, 
and directions for the conduct of the understand- 
ing, which are admirable both for their specu- 
lative ingenuity and practical use. 

" The first of these," says Lord Bacon, " is the extreme 
affection of two extremities; the one antiquity, the other 
novelty, wherein it seemeth the children of time do take after 
the nature and malice of the father. For as he devoureth his 
children ; so one of them seeketh to devour and suppress the 
other; while antiquity envieth there should be new additions, 
and novelty cannot be content to add, but it must deface. 
Surely, the advice of the prophet is the true direction in this 
respect, "state super vias antiquas, et videte qucenam sit via 
recta et bona, et ambulate in ea. Antiquity deserveth that 
reverence, that men should make a stand thereupon, and dis- 
cover what is the best way, but when the discovery is well 
taken, then to take progression. And to speak truly," he 
adds, " Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi. These times are 
the ancient times when the world is ancient ; and not those 



CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS. 289 

which we count ancient online retrogrado, by a computation 
backwards from ourselves. 

" Another error induced by the former, is a distrust that 
any thing should be now to be found out which the world 
should have missed and passed over so long time, as if the 
same objection were to be made to time that Lucian makes 
to Jupiter and other the Heathen Gods, of which he wonder- 
eth that they begot so many children in old age, and begot 
none in his time, and asketh whether they were become sep- 
tuagenary, or whether the law Papia made against old men's 
marriages had restrained them. So it seemeth men doubt, 
lest time was become past children and generation: wherein 
contrary-wise, we see commonly the levity and unconstancy 
of men's judgments, which till a matter be done, wonder that 
it can be done, and as soon as it is done, wonder again that 
it was done no sooner, as we see in the expedition of Alexander 
into Asia, which at first was prejudged as a vast and impos- 
sible enterprise, and yet afterwards it pleaseth Livy to make 
no more of it than this, nil aliud quam bene ausus vana con- 
temnere. And the same happened to Columbus in his western 
navigation. But in intellectual matters, it is much more 
common ; as may be seen in most of the propositions in Eu- 
clid, which till they be demonstrate, they seem strange to 
our assent, but being demonstrate, our mind accepteth of 
them by a kind of relation (as the lawyers speak) tts^f we had 
known them before. 

" Another is an impatience of doubt and haste to assertion 
without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the 
two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of ac- 
tion, commonly spoken of by the Ancients. The one plain and 
smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable: the other 
rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair 
and even; so it is in contemplation, if a man will begiu with 
certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to 
begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. 

U 



290 CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS. 

" Another error is in the manner of the tradition or deli- 
very of knowledge, which is for the most part magistral and 
peremptory, and not ingenuous and faithful ; in a sort, as may 
be soonest believed, and not easiliest examined. It is true > 
that in compendious treatises for practice, that form is not to 
be disallowed. But in the true handling of knowledge, men 
ought not to fall either on the one side into the vein of Velleius 
the Epicurean ; nil tarn metuens quam tie dubitare aliqua de 
re videretur : nor on the other side, into Socrates his ironical 
doubting of all things, but to propound things sincerely, with 
more or less asseveration; as they stand in a man's own judg- 
ment, proved more or less." 

Lord Bacon in this part declares, " that it is 
not his purpose to enter into a laudative of learn- 
ing or to make a Hymn to the Muses," yet he 
has gone near to do this in the following ob- 
servations on the dignity of knowledge. He 
says, after speaking of rulers and conquerors : 

" But the commandment of knowledge is yet higher than 
the commandment over the will ; for it is a commandment 
over the reason, belief, and understanding of man, which 
is the highest part of the mind, and giveth law to the will 
itself. For there is no power on earth which setteth a throne 
or chair of estate in the spirits and souls of men, and in 
their cogitations, imaginations, opinions, and beliefs, but 
knowledge and learning. And therefore we see the detestable 
and extreme pleasure that arch- heretics and false prophets 
and impostors are transported with, when they once find in 
themselves that they have a superiority in the faith and con- 
science of men : so great, as if they have once tasted of it, it 
is seldom seen that any torture or persecution can make them 
relinquish or abandon it. But as this is that which the au- 
thor of the Revelations calls the depth or profoundness of 



CHARACTER OF LORD BACON'S WORKS. 291 

Satan; so by argument of contraries, the just and lawful so- 
vereignty over men's understanding, by force of truth rightly 
interpreted, is that which approacheth nearest to the simili- 
tude of the Divine Rule Let us conclude with the 

dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in that 
whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is immor- 
tality or continuance : for to this tendeth generation, and 
raising of houses and families; to this tendeth buildings, 
foundations, and monuments; to this tendeth the desire of 
memory, fame, and celebration, and in effect, the strength 
of all other humane desires ; we see then how far the monu- 
ments of wit and learning are more durable than the monu- 
ments of power or of the hands. For have not the verses of 
Homer continued twenty-five hundred years and more, with- 
out the loss of a syllable or letter ; during which time infinite 
palaces, temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and de- 
molished ? It is not possible to have the true pictures or 
statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar, no, nor of the kings, or 
great personages of much later years. For the originals can- 
not last; and the copies cannot but lose of the life and truth. 
But the images of men's wits and knowledge remain in books, 
exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual 
renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, be- 
cause they generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of 
others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in 
succeeding ages. So that, if the invention of the ship was thought 
so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to 
place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participa- 
tion of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, 
which as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make 
ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, 
and inventions the. one of the other V 

Passages of equal force and beauty might be 

u2 



292 CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER. 

quoted from almost every page of this work and 

of the Essays. 

Sir Thomas Brown and Bishop Taylor were 
two prose- writers in the succeeding age, who, 
for pomp and copiousness of style, might be com- 
pared to Lord Bacon. In all other respects they 
were opposed to him and to one another. — As 
Bacon seemed to bend all his thoughts to the 
practice of life, and to bring home the light of 
science to " the bosoms and businesses of men," 
Sir Thomas Brown seemed to be of opinion that 
the only business of life, was to think, and that 
the proper object of speculation was, by darken- 
ing knowledge, to breed more speculation, and 
" find no end in wandering mazes lost." He 
chose the incomprehensible and impracticable as 
almost the only subjects fit for a lofty and lasting 
contemplation, or for the exercise of a solid faith. 
He cried out for an oh altitudo beyond the heights 
of revelation, and posed himself with apocryphal 
mysteries, as the pastime of his leisure hours. 
He pushes a question to the utmost verge of con- 
jecture, that he may repose on the certainty 
of doubt ; and he removes an object to the great- 
est distance from him, that he may take a high 
and abstracted interest in it, consider it in 
its relation to the sum of things, not to himself, 
and bewilder his understanding in the univer- 



CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER. 293 

sality of its nature and the inscrutableness of 
its origin. His is the sublime of indifference ; 
a passion for the abstruse and imaginary. He 
turns the world round for his amusement, as if it 
was a globe of paste-board. He looks down on 
sublunary affairs as if he had taken his station in 
one of the planets. The Antipodes are next-door 
neighbours to him, and Dooms-day is not far off. 
With a thought he embraces both the poles ; the 
march of his pen is over the great divisions of 
geography and chronology. Nothing touches him 
nearer than humanity. He feels that he is mortal 
only in the decay of nature, and the dust of long- 
forgotten tombs. The finite is lost in the in- 
finite. The orbits of the heavenly bodies or the 
history of empires are to him but a point in time 
or a speck in the universe. The great Platonic 
year revolves in one of his periods. Nature is too 
little for the grasp of his style. He scoops an 
antithesis out of fabulous antiquity, and rakes up 
an epithet from the sweepings of Chaos. It is 
as if his books had dropt from the clouds, or as 
if Friar Bacon's head could speak. He stands 
on the edge of the world of sense and reason, and 
gains a vertigo by looking down at impossibilities 
and chimeras. Or he busies himself with the mys- 
teries of the Cabbala, or the enclosed secrets of the 
heavenly quincunxes, as children are amused with 
tales of the nursery. The passion of curiosity 



2<H CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER. 

(the only passion of childhood) had in him 
survived to old age, and had superannuated his 
other faculties. He moralizes and grows pathe- 
tic on a mere idle fancy of his own, as if thought 
and being were the same, or as if " all this 
world were one glorious lie." For, a thing to 
have ever had a name is sufficient warrant to 
entitle it to respectful belief, and to invest it 
with all the rights of a subject and its predicates. 
He is superstitious, but not bigotted : to him all 
religions are much the same, and he says that 
he should not like to have lived in the time 
of Christ and the Apostles, as it would have 
rendered his faith too gross and palpable. — His 
gossipping egotism and personal character have 
been preferred unjustly to Montaigne's. He had 
no personal character at all but the peculiarity 
of resolving all the other elements of his being 
into thought, and of trying experiments on his 
own nature in an exhausted receiver of idle and 
unsatisfactory speculations. All that he '"diffe- 
rences himself by," to use his own expression, 
is this moral and physical indifference. In de- 
scribing himself, he deals only in negatives. 
He says he has neither prejudices nor antipa- 
thies to manners, habits, climate, food, to per- 
sons or things; they were alike acceptable to 
him as they afforded new topics for reflection ; 
and he even professes that he could never bring 



CHARACTER OF Sift T. BROWN AS A WRITER. 2£5 

himself heartily to hate the Devil. He owns in 
one place of the Religio Medici, that " he could 
be content if the species were continued like 
trees/' and yet he declares that this was from no 
aversion to love, or beauty, or harmony; and the 
reasons he assigns to prove the orthodoxy of his 
taste in this respect, is, that he was an admirer 
of the music of the spheres ! He teUs us that 
he often composed a comedy in his sleep. It 
would be curious to know the subject or ihe tex- 
ture of the plot. It must have been something 
like Nabbess Mask of Microcosmus, of which 
the dramatis personce have been already given ; 
or else a misnomer, like Dante's Divine Comedy 
of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. He was twice 
married, as if to shew his disregard even for his 
own theory ; and he had a hand in the execution 
of some old women for witchcraft, I suppose, 
to keep a decorum in absurdity, and to indulge 
an agreeable horror at his own fantastical reve- 
ries on the occasion. In a word, his mind 
seemed to converse chiefly with the intelligible 
forms, the spectral apparitions of things, he de- 
lighted in the preternatural and visionary, and he 
onlv existed at the circumference of his nature. 
He had the most intense consciousness of contra- 
dictions and non-entities, and he decks them out 
in the pride and pedantry of words as if they 
were the attire of his proper person : the cate- 






t£)6 CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN ASA WRITER. 

gories hang about his neck like the gold chain of 
knighthood, and he " walks gowned" in the in- 
tricate folds and swelling drapery of dark say- 
ings and impenetrable riddles ! 

I will give one gorgeous passage to illustrate 
all this, from his Urn-Burial, or Hydriotaphia 
He digs up the urns of some ancient Druids with 
the same ceremony and devotion as if they had 
contained the hallowed relics of his dearest 
friends; and certainly we feel (as it has been 
said) the freshness of the mould, and the breath 
of mortality, in the spirit and force of his style. 
The conclusion of this singular and unparalleled 
performance is as follows: 

" What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles as- 
sumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling 
questions, are not beyond all conjecture. What time the per- 
sons of these Ossuaries entered the famous nations of the dead, 
and slept with princes and counsellors, might admit a wide 
solution. But who were the proprietors of these bones, or 
what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above 
antiquarianism : not to be resolved by man, nor easily perhaps 
by spirits, except we consult the provincial guardians, or tu- 
telary observators. Had they made as good provision for 
their names, as they have done for their reliques, they had 
not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to sub- 
sist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in 
duration. Vain ashes, which in the oblivion of names, per- 
sons, times, and sexes, have found unto themselves, a fruit- 



CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER. 297 

less continuation, and only arise unto late posterity, as em- 
blems of mortal vanities ; antidotes against pride, vain glory, 
and madding vices. Pagan vain-glories, which thought the 
world might last for ever, had encouragement for ambition, 
and finding no Atropos unto the immortality of their names, 
were never dampt with the necessity of oblivion. Even old 
ambitions had the advantage of ours, in the attempts of their 
vain glories, who, acting early, and before the probable me- 
ridian of time, have, by this time, found great accomplish- 
ment of their designs, whereby the ancient heroes have al- 
ready outlasted their monuments, and mechanical preserva- 
tions. But in this latter scene of time we cannot expect such 
mummies unto our memories, when ambition may fear the 
prophecy of Elias, and Charles the Fifth can never hope to 
live within two Methuselah's of Hector. 

*' And therefore restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our 
memories unto present considerations, seems a vanity almost 
out of date, and superannuated piece of folly. We cannot hope 
to live so long in our names as some have done in their per- 
sons : one face of Janus holds no proportion unto the other. 
'Tis too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the 
world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs. 
To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we 
daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without 
injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were 
a contradiction to our beliefs. We whose generations are or- 
dained in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off 
from such imaginations. And being necessitated to eye the 
remaining particle of futurity, are naturally constituted unto 
thoughts of the next world, and cannot excuseably decline the 
consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids pil- 
lars of snow, and all that's past a moment. 

" Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the 
mortal right-lined circle, nrist conclude and shut up all. 



298 CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER. 

There is no antidote against the opium of time, which tempo- 
rally considereth all things; our fathers find their graves in 
our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried 
in our survivors. Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years: 
generations pass while some trees stand, and old families 
last not three oaks. To be read by bare inscriptions like many 
in Gruter, to hope for eternity by enigmatical epithets, or first 
letters of our names, to be studied by antiquaries, who we 
were, and have new names given us like many of the mum- 
mies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity, 
even by everlasting languages. 

"> To be content that times to come should only know there 
was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, 
was a frigid ambition in Cardan : disparaging his horoscopal 
inclination and judgment of himself, who cares to subsist like 
Hippocrates' patients, or Achilles' horses in Homer, under Baked 
nominations without deserts and noble acts, which are the bal- 
sam of our memories, theEntelechia and soul of our subsistences. 
To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. 
The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name, 
than Herodias wiih one. And who had not rather have been 
the good thief, than Pilate ? 

" But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, 
and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit 
of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids 1 
Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost 
lost that built it ; time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's 
horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our 
felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have 
equal durations: and Thersites is like to live as long as Aga- 
memnon, without the favour of the everlasting register. 
Who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether 
there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that 
stand remembered in the known account of lime] the first man 



CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER. 299 

had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life 
had been his only chronicle. 

" Oblivion is not to be hired: the greater part must be con- 
tent to be as though they had not been, to be found in the 
register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven 
names make up the first story, and the recorded names ever 
since, contain not one living century. The number of the 
dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far 
surpassed! the day, and who knows when was the equinox 1 
Every hour adds uuto that current arithmetic, which scarce 
stands one moment. And since death must be theLucina of life, 
and even Pagans could doubt whether thus to live, were to 
die: since our longest sun sets at right descensions, and 
makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long be- 
fore we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes ; 
since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying me- 
mentos, and time that grows old itself, bids 4 us hope no long 
duration: diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation. 

" Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion 
shares with memory, a great part even of our living beings; we 
slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of 
affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no 
extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into 
stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities, miseries are slip- 
pery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no un- 
happy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful 
of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we 
digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and our delivered 
senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows 
are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of 
antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmi- 
gration of their souls. | A good way to continue their memo- 
ries, while having the advantage of plural successions, they 
could not but act something remarkable in such variety of 



300 CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER. 

beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves, make 
accumulation of glory unto their last durations. Others, 
rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, 
were content to recede into the common being, and make 
one particle of the public soul of all things, which was no 
more than to return into their unknown and divine original 
again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, conserving 
their bodies in sweet consistences, to attend the return of their 
souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind, and folly. 
The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, 
avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, 
Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams. 

" In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any pa- 
tent from oblivion, in preservations below the moon : Men 
have been deceived even in their flatteries above the sun, 
and studied conceits to perpetuate their names in heaven. 
The various cosmography of that part hath already varied the 
names of contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in Orion, 
and Osyris in the Dog-star. While we look for incorruption 
in the heavens, we find they are but like the earth ; durable 
in their main bodies, alterable in their parts: whereof beside 
comets and new stars, perspectives begin to tell tales. Aud 
the spots that wander about the sun, with Phaeton's favour, 
would make clear conviction. 

" There is nothing immortal, but immortality ; whatever 
hath no beginning may be confident of no end. All others 
have a dependent being, and within the reach of destruction, 
which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot 
destroy itself; and the highest strain of omnipotency to be so 
powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even from the power 
of itself. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates 
all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death, 
makes a folly of posthumous memory. God who can only 
destroy our souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either 



CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER. 30? 

of our bodies or names hath directly promised no duration. 
Wherein there is so much of chance, that the boldest expec- 
tants have found unhappy frustration ; and to hold long sub- 
sistence, seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble 
animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solem- 
nizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting 
ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature. 

" Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within 
us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too 
little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, 
and to burn like Sardanapalus; but the widom of funeral laws 
found the folly of prodigal blazes, and reduced undoing fires 
unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so 
mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an urn. 

" Five languages secured not the epitaph of Gordianus ; the 
man of God lives longer without a tomb than any by one, in- 
visibly interred by Angels, and adjudged to obscurity, though 
not without some marks directing humane discovery. Enoch 
and Elias without either tomb or burial, in an anomalous 
state of being, are the great examples of perpetuity, in their 
long and living memory, in strict account being still on this 
side death, and having a late part yet to act on this stage of 
earth. If in the decretory term of the world we shall not all 
die but be changed, according to received translation; the 
last day will make but few graves; at least quick resurrections 
will anticipate lastiug sepultures; some graves will be opened 
before they be quite closed, and Lazarus be no wonder. 
When many that feared to die shall groan that they can die 
but once, the dismal state is the second and living death, when 
life puts despair on the damned ; when men shall wish the 
covering of mountains, not of monuments, and annihilation 
shall be courted. 

" While some have studied monuments, others have studiously 
declined them : and some have been so vainly boisterous, that 



302 CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER. 

they durst not acknowledge their graves ; wherein Alaricus 
seems most subtle, who had a river turned to hide his bones 
at the bottom. Even Sylla that thought himself safe in his 
urn, could not prevent revenging tongues, and stones thrown 
at his monument. Happy are they whom privacy makes inno- 
cent, who deal so with men in this world, that they are not 
afraid to meet them in the next, who when they die, make 
no commotion among the dead, and are not touched with that 
poetical taunt of Isaiah. 

" Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of 
vain-glory, and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But 
the most magnanimous resolution rests in the Christian reli- 
gion, which trampleth upon pride, and sits on the neck of 
ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible perpetuity, unto 
which all others must diminish their diameters, and be poorly 
seen in angles of contingency. 

" Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, 
made little more of this world, than the world that was before 
it, while they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and 
night of their fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as 
truly to understand Christian annihilation, extasies, exolution, 
liquefaction, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation 
of God, and ingression into the divine shadow, they have al- 
ready had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the glory 
of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them. 

" To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their produc- 
tions, to exist in their names, and praedicament of Chimeras, 
was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one 
part of their Elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphy- 
sicks of true belief. To live indeed is to be again ourselves, 
which being not only an hope but an evidence in noble be- 
lievers : 'tis all one to lie in St. Innocent's church-yard, as in 
the sands of Egypt : ready to be any thing, in the extasy of 
being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus," 



CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER. 303 

I subjoin the following account of this extra- 
ordinary writer's style, said to be written in a 
blank leaf of his w r orks by Mr. Coleridge. 

" Sir Thomas Brown is among my first favou- 
rites. Rich in various knowledge, exuberant in 
conceptions and conceits; contemplative, ima- 
ginative, often truly great and magnificent in his 
style and diction, though, doubtless, too often 
big, stiff, and hyperlatinistic : thus I might, 
without admixture of falshood, describe Sir T. 
Brown; and my description would have this fault 
only, that it would be equally, or almost equally, 
applicable to half a dozen other writers, from 
the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth to the 
end of the reign of Charles the Second. He is 
indeed all this ; and what he has more than all 
this, and peculiar to himself, I seem to convey 
to my own mind in some measure, by saying, 
that he is a quiet and sublime enthusiast, with a 
strong tinge of the fantast; the humourist con- 
stantly mingling with, and flashing across the 
philosopher, as the darting colours in shot silk 
play upon the main dye. In short, he has brains 
in his head, which is all the more interesting for 
a little twist in the brains. He sometimes re- 
minds the reader of Montaigne ; but from no 
other than the general circumstance of an ego- 
tism common to both, which, in Montaigne, is 



304 CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER. 

too often a mere amusing gossip, a chit-chat 
story of whims and peculiarities that lead to 
nothing; but which, in Sir Thomas Brown, is 
always the result of a feeling heart, conjoined with 
a mind of active curiosity, the natural and be- 
coming egotism of a man, who, loving other 
men as himself, gains the habit and the privi- 
lege of talking about himself as familiarly as 
about other men. Fond of the curious, and a 
hunter of oddities and strangenesses, while he 
conceives himself with quaint and humorous 
gravity, an useful inquirer into physical truths 
and fundamental science, he loved to contem- 
plate and discuss his own thoughts and feelings, 
because he found by comparison with other 
men's, that they, too, were curiosities ; and so, 
with a perfectly graceful interesting ease, he put 
them, too, into his museum and cabinet of rari- 
ties. In very truth, he was not mistaken, so 
completely does he see every thing in a light of 
his own ; reading nature neither by sun, moon, 
or candle-light, but by the light of the fairy glory 
around his own head; that you might say, that 
nature had granted to him in perpetuity, a pa- 
tent and monopoly for all his thoughts. Read 
his Hydriotaphia above all, and, in addition to 
the peculiarity, the exclusive Sir Thomas Brow- 
ness, of all the fancies and modes of illustration, 
wonder at, and admire, his entireness in every 



CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER. 305 

subject which is before him. He is totus in illo, 
he follows it, he never wanders from it, and he 
has no occasion to wande; ; for whatever hap- 
pens to be his subject, he metamorphoses all na- 
ture into it. In that Hydriotaphia, or treatise on 
some urns dug up in Norfolk — how earthy, how 
redolent of graves and sepulchres is every line ! 
You have now dark mould ; now a thigh-bone ; 
now a skull ; then a bit of a mouldered coffin ; a 
fragment of an old tombstone, with moss in its 
hicjacet; a ghost, a wi-dhgsheet; or the echo 
of a funeral psalm wafted on a November wind : 
and the gayest thing you shall meet w T ith, shall 
be a silver nail, or gilt anno domini, from a pe- 
rished coffin top ! — The very same remark applies 
in the same force, to the interesting, though far 
less interesting treatise on the Quincuncial Plan- 
tations of the Ancients, the same entireness of 
subject ! Quincunxes in heaven above ; quin- 
cunxes in earth below; quincunxes in deity; quin- 
cunxes in the mind of man ; quincunxes in tones, 
in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in 
every thing! In short, just turn to the last leaf 
of this volume, and read out aloud to yourself 
the seven last paragraphs of chapter 5th, begin- 
ning with the words " More considerable." But 
it is time for me to be in bed. In the words of 
Sir T. Brown (which will serve as a fine speci- 
men of his manner), " But the quincunxes of 

x 



306 CHARACTER OF SIR T. BROWN AS A WRITER. 

Heaven (the hyades, or Jive stars about the hori- 
zon, at midnight at that time) run low, and it is 
time we close the five parts of knowledge ; we are 
unwilling to spin out our waking thoughts into 
the phantoms of sleep, which often continue pre- 
cogitations, making cables of cobwebs, and wil- 
dernesses of handsome groves. To keep our eyes 
open longer, were to act our antipodes! The 
huntsmen are up in Arabia; and they have al- 
ready passed their first sleep in Persia." Think 
you, that there ever v;?,s such a reason given be- 
fore for going to bed at midnight ; to wit, that 
if we did not, we should be acting the part of 
our antipodes ! And then, " the huntsmen are 
up in arabia," — what life, what fancy ! Does 
the whimsical knight give us thus, the essence 
of gunpowder tea, and call it an opiate*?" 

* Sir Thomas Brown has it, " The huntsmen are up in 
America," but Mr. Coleridge prefers reading Arabia. I do 
not think his account of the Urn-Burial very happy. Sir 
Thomas can be said to be " wholly in his subject/' only be- 
cause he is wholly out of it. There is not a word in the 
Hydriotaphia about " a thigh-bone, or a skull, or a bit of 
mouldered coffin, or a tomb-stone, or a ghost, or a winding- 
sheet, or an echo," nor is " a silver nail or a gilt anno do- 
mini the gayest thing you shall meet with." You do not meet 
with them at all in the text ; nor is it possible, either from the 
nature of the subject, or of Sir T. Brown's mind, that you 
should ! He chose the subject of Urn-Burial, because it was 
" one of no mark or likelihood," totally free from the ro- 



CHARACTER OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 307 

Jeremy Taylor was a writer as different from 
Sir Thomas Brown as it was possible for one 
writer to be from another. He was a dignitary 
of the church, and except in matters of casu- 
istry and controverted points, could not be sup- 
posed to enter upon speculative doubts, or give 
a loose to a sort of dogmatical scepticism. He 
had less thought, less " stuff of the conscience," 
less " to give us pause," in his impetuous ora- 
tory, but he had equal fancy — not the same vast- 
ness and profundity, but more richness and 
beauty, more warmth and tenderness. He is 
as rapid, as flowing, and endless, as the other 
is stately, abrupt, and concentrated. The elo- 
quence of the one is like a river, that of the 
other is more like an aqueduct. The one is as 
sanguine, as the other is saturnine in the temper 
of his mind. Jeremy Taylor took obvious and 
admitted truths for granted, and illustrated them 
with an inexhaustible display of new and en- 
chanting imagery. Sir Thomas Brown talks in 

mantic prettinesses and pleasing poetical common-places with 
which Mr. Coleridge has adorned it, and because, being 
" without form and void," it gave unlimited scope to his high- 
raised and shadowy imagination. The motto of this author's 
compositions might be — " De apparentibus et non existen- 
tibus eadem est ratio." He created his own materials : or to 
speak of him in his own language, '* he saw nature in the 
elements of its chaos, and discerned his favourite notions in the 
great obscurity of nothing r 

x2 



308 CHARACTER OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 

sum-totals : Jeremy Taylor enumerates all the 
particulars of a subject. He gives every aspect 
it will bear, and never " cloys with sameness." 
His characteristic is enthusiastic and delightful 
amplification. Sir Thomas Brown gives the begin- 
ning and end of things, that you may judge of their 
place and magnitude : Jeremy Taylor describes 
their qualities and texture, and enters into all the 
items of the debtor and creditor account between 
life and death, grace and nature, faith and good 
works. He puts his heart into his fancy. He 
does not pretend to annihilate the passions and 
pursuits of mankind in the pride of philosophic 
indifference, but treats them as serious and mo- 
mentous things, warring with conscience and 
the soul's health, or furnishing the means of 
grace and hopes of glory. In his writings, the 
frail stalk of human life reclines on the bosom of 
eternity. His Holy Living and Dying is a di- 
vine pastoral. He writes to the faithful follow- 
ers of Christ, as the shepherd pipes to his flock. 
He introduces touching and heartfelt appeals to 
familiar life ; condescends to men of low estate ; 
and his pious page blushes with modesty and 
beauty. His style is prismatic. It unfolds the 
colours of the rainbow ; it floats like the bubble 
through the air ; it is like innumerable dew-drops 
that glitter on the face of morning, and tremble 
as they glitter. He does not dig his way under- 



CHARACTER OF JEREMV TAYLOR. 309 

ground, but slides upon ice, borne on the winged 
car of fancy. The dancing light he throws upon 
objects is like an Aurora Boreal is, playing be- 
twixt heaven and earth — 

" Where pure Niemi's faery banks arise, 

And fringed with roses Tenglio rolls its stream." 

His exhortations to piety and virtue are a gay 
memento mori. He mixes up death's-heads and 
aramanthine flowers ; makes life a procession to 
the grave, but crowns it with gaudy garlands, 
and " rains sacrificial roses" on its path. In a 
word, his writings are more like fine poetry than 
any other prose whatever; they are a choral song 
in praise of virtue, and a hymn to the Spirit 
of the Universe. I shall give a few passages, to 
shew how feeble and inefficient this praise is. 

The Holy Dying begins in this manner : 

" A man is a bubble. He is born in 'vanity and sin ; he 
comes Into the world like morning mushrooms, soon thrust- 
ing up their heads into the air, and conversing with their 
kindred of the same production, and as soon they turn into 
dust and forgetfulness ; some of them without any other in- 
terest in the affairs of the world, but that they made their 
parents a little glad, and very sorrowful. Others ride longer 
in the storm ; it may be until seven years of vanity be ex- 
phed, and then peradventure the sun shines hot upon their 
heads, and they fall into the shades below, into the cover of 



310 CHARACTER OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 

death and darkness of the grave to hide them. But if the 
buhble stands the shock of a bigger drop, and outlives the 
chances of a child, of a careless nurse, of drowning in a pail of 
water, of being over-laid by a sleepy* servant, or such little 
accidents, then the young man dances like a bubble empty 
and gay, and shines like a dove's neck, or the image of a 
rainbow, which hath no substance, and whose very imagery 
and colours are phantastical ; and so he dances out the gaiety 
of his youth, and is all the while in a storm, and endures, only 
because he is not knocked on the head by a drop of bigger 
rain, or crushed by the pressure of a load of indigested meat, 
or quenched by the disorder of an ill-placed humour ; and to 
preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hos- 
tilities, is as great a miracle as to create him; to preserve him 
from rushing into nothing, and at first to draw him up from 
nothing, were equally the issues of an Almighty power." 

Another instance of the same rich continuity 
of feeling and transparent brilliancy in working 
out an idea, is to be found in his description 
of the dawn and progress of reason. 

" Some are called at age at fourteen, some at one and 
twenty, some never ; but all men late enough ; for the life of 
a man comes upon him slowly and insensibly. But as when the 
sun approaches towards the gates of the morning, he first 
opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of 
darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to 
mattins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps 
over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns, like 
those which decked the brows of Moses, when he was forced 
to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God ; 
and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, 
till he shews a fair face and a full light, and then he shines 



CHARACTER OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 311 

one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping 
great and little showers, and sets quickly: so is a man's reason 
and his life." 

This passage puts one in mind of the rising 
dawn and kindling skies in one of Claude's land- 
scapes. Sir Thomas Brown has nothing of this 
rich finishing and exact gradation. The genius of 
the two men differed, as that of the painter from 
the mathematician. The one measures objects, 
the other copies them. The one shews that 
things are nothing out of themselves, or in rela- 
tion to the whole : the one, what they are in them- 
selves, and in relation to us. Or the one may 
be said to apply the telescope of the mind to 
distant bodies ; the other looks at nature in its 
infinite minuteness and glossy splendour through 
a solar microscope. 

In speaking of Death, our author's style assumes 
the port and withering smile of the King of Ter- 
rors. The following are scattered passages on 
this subject. 

" It is the same harmless thing that a poor shepherd suf- 
fered yesterday or a maid servant to-day; and at the same 
time in which you die, iis that very night a thousand crea- 
tures die with you, some wise men, and many fools ; and the 
wisdom of the first will not quit him, and the folly of the lat- 
ter does not make him unable to die." 

" I have read of a fair young German gentleman, who, 
while living, often refused to be pictured, but put off the im- 
portunity of his friends' desire by giving way that after a few 
days' burial, they might send a painter to his vault, and if 



312 CHARACTER OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 

they saw cause for it, draw the image of his death unto tkt 
life. They did so, and found his face half-eaten, and his 
midriff and back-bone full of serpents ; and so he stands pic- 
tured among his armed ancestors." 

" It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every 
person, and it is visible to us, who are alive. Reckon but 
from the sprightfulness of youth and the fair cheeks and full 
eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness and strong flexure 
of the joints of five and twenty, to the hollo wness and dead 
paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of a three days' 
burial, and we shall perceive the distance to be very great 
and very strange. But so have I seen a rose newly springing 
from the clefts of its hood, and at first it was fair as the 
morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as the lamb's 
fleece ; but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin 
modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retire- 
ments, it began to put on darkness and to decline to softness 
and the symptoms of a sickly age, it bowed the head and 
broke its stalk, and at night, having lost some of its leaves, 
and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and out- 
worn faces. So does the fairest beauty change, and it will 
be as bad with you and me ; and then what servants shall we 
have to wait upon us in the grave 1 What friends to visit us ? 
What officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwhole- 
some cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the 
weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our fu- 
nerals f" 

f* A man may read a sermon, the best and most passionate 
that ever man preached, if he shall but enter into the sepul- 
chres of kings. In the same Escurial where the Spanish princes 
live in greatness and power, and decree war or peace, they 
have wisely placed a cemetery where their ashes and their glory 
shall sleep till time shall be no more : and where our kings 
have been crowned, their ancestors lie interred, and they 
must walk over their grandsires' head to take his crown. 
There is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the great- 






CHARACTER OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 313 

est change from rich to naked, from cieled roofs to arched 
coffins, from living like Gods to die like men. There is 
enough to cool the flames of lust, to abate the heights of 
pride, to appease the itch of covetous desires, to sully and 
dash out the dissembling colours of a lustful, artificial, and 
imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the peaceful, the 
fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised 
princes mingle their dust, and pay down their symbol of mor- 
tality, and tell all the world that when we die, our ashes shall 
be equal to kings, and our accounts easier, and our pains for 
our crimes shall be less*. To my apprehension, it is a sad 

* The above passage is an inimitably fine paraphrase of 
some lines on the tombs in Westminster Abbey by F. Beaumont. 
It shows how near Jeremy Taylor's style was to poetry, and 
how well it weaves in with it. 

*• Mortality, behold, and fear, 
What a charge of flesh is here ! 
Think how many royal bones 
Sleep within this heap of stones : 
Here they lie, had realms and lands, 
Who now want strength to stir their hands. 
Where from their pulpits seal'd in dust, 
They preach ' In greatness is no trust.' 
Here's an acre sown indeed 
With the richest, royal'st seed 
That the earth did e'er suck in, 
Since the first man died for sin. 
Here the bones of birth have cried, 
Though Gods they were, as men they died, 
Here are sands, ignoble things, 
Dropp'd from the ruin'd sides of kings. 
Here's a world of pomp and state 
Buried in dust, once dead by fate." 



314 CHARACTER OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 

record which is left by Athenaeus concerning Ninus the great 
Assyrian monarch, whose life and death is summed up in 
these words : " Ninus the Assyrian had an ocean of gold, and 
other riches more than the sand in the Caspian sea ; he never 
saw the stars, and perhaps he never desired it; he never 
stirred up the holy fire among the Magi; nor touched his 
God with the sacred rod according to the laws: he never 
offered sacrifice, nor worshipped the deity, nor administered 
justice, nor spake to the people; nor numbered them : but he 
was most valiant to eat and drink, and having mingled his 
wines, he threw the rest upon the stones. This man is 
dead : behold his sepulchre, and now hear where Ninus is. 
Sometime I was Ninus, and drew the breath of a living 
man, but now am nothing but clay. I have nothing but 
what I did eat, and what I served to myself in lust is all 
my portion: the wealth with which I was blessed, my ene- 
mies meeting together shall carry away, as the mad Thyades 
carry a raw goat. I am gone to hell: and when I went 
thither, I neither carried gold nor horse, nor silver chariot. 
I that wore a mitre, am now a little heap of dust." 

He who wrote in this manner also wore a 
mitre, and is now a heap of dust ; but when the 
name of Jeremy Taylor is no longer remembered 
with reverence, genius will have become a 
mockery, and virtue an empty shade ! 



LECTURE VIII. 



ON 

THE SPIRIT OF ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERA- 
TURE—ON THE GERMAN DRAMA, CONTRASTED 
WITH THAT OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. 

Before I proceed to the more immediate 
subject of the present Lecture, I wish to say a 
few words of one or two writers in our own time, 
who have imbibed the spirit and imitated the 
language of our elder dramatists. Among these 
I may reckon the ingenious author of the Apos- 
tate and Evadne, who in the last-mentioned 
play, in particular, has availed himself with 
much judgment and spirit of the tragedy of the 
Traitor by old Shirley. It would be curious to 
hear the opinion of a professed admirer of the An- 
cients, and captious despiser of the Moderns, with 
respect to this production, before he knew it was 
a copy of an old play. Shirley himself lived in 
the time of Charles I. and died in the beginning 
of Charles II.*; but he had formed his style on 

* He and his wife both died from fright, occasioned by the 
great fire of London in \665, and lie buried in St. Giles's 
church-yard. 



316 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

that of the preceding age, and had written the 
greatest number of his plays in conjunction with 
Jonson, Deckar, and Massinger. He was " the 
last of those fair clouds that on the bosom of bright 
honour sailed in long procession, calm and beau- 
tiful." The name of Mr. Tobin is familiar to 
every lover of the drama. His Honey-Moon is 
evidently founded on The Taming of a Shrew, 
and Duke Aranza has been pronounced by a po- 
lite critic to be " an elegant Petruchio." The 
plot is taken from Shakespear ; but the language 
and sentiments, both of this play and of the 
Curfew, bear a more direct resemblance to the 
flowery tenderness of Beaumont and Fletcher, 
who were, I believe, the favourite study of our 
author. Mr. Lamb's John Woodvil may be con- 
sidered as a dramatic fragment, intended for the 
closet rather than the stage. It would sound 
oddly in the lobbies of either theatre, amidst the 
noise and glare and bustle of resort; but " there 
where we have treasured up our hearts," in 
silence and in solitude, it may claim and find a 
place for itself. It might be read with advantage 
in the still retreats of Sherwood Forest, where it 
would throw a new-born light on the green, 
sunny glades ; the tenderest flower might seem 
to drink of the poet's spirit, and " the tall deer 
that paints a. dancing shadow of his horns in the 
swift brook," might seem to do so in mockery of 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 317 

the poet's thought. Mr. Lamb, with a modesty 
often attendant on fine feeling, has loitered too 
long in the humbler avenues leading to the tem- 
ple of ancient genius, instead of marching boldly 
up to the sanctuary, as many with half his pre- 
tensions would have done : " but fools rush in, 
where angels fear to tread." The defective or 
objectionable parts of this production are imita- 
tions of the defects of the old writers : its beau- 
ties are his own, though in their manner. The 
touches of thought and passion are often as pure 
and delicate as they are profound ; and the cha- 
racter of his heroine Margaret is perhaps the 
finest and most genuine female character out of 
Shakespear. This tragedy was not critic-proof: 
it had its cracks and flaws and breaches, through 
which the enemy marched in triumphant. The 
station which he had chosen was not indeed a 
walled town, but a straggling village, which the 
experienced engineers proceeded to lay waste; 
and he is pinned down in more than one Review 
of the day, as an exemplary warning to indiscreet 
writers, who venture beyond the pale of periodical 
taste and conventional criticism. Mr. Lamb was 
thus hindered by the taste of the polite vulgar from 
writing as he wished ; his own taste would not 
allow him to write like them : and he (perhaps 
wisely) turned critic and prose-writer in his own 
defence. To say that he has written better about 






318 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

Shakespear, and about Hogarth, than any body 
else, is saying little in his praise. — A gentleman 
of the name of Cornwall, who has lately pub- 
lished a volume of Dramatic Scenes, has met with 
a very different reception, but I cannot say that 
he has deserved it. He has made no sacrifice at 
the shrine of fashionable affectation or false glitter. 
There is nothing common-place in his style to 
soothe the complacency of dulness, nothing ex- 
travagant to startle the grossness of ignorance. 
He writes with simplicity, delicacy, and fervour ; 
continues a scene from Shakespear, or works out 
a hint from Boccacio in the spirit of his originals, 
and though he bows with reverence at the altar 
of those great masters, he keeps an eye curiously 
intent on nature, and a mind awake to the ad- 
monitions of his own heart. As he has begun, 
so let him proceed. Any one who will turn to 
the glowing and richly-coloured conclusion of 
the Falcon, will, I think, agree with me in this 
wish! 

There are four sorts or schools of tragedy 
with which I am acquainted. The first is the 
antique or classical. This consisted, I appre- 
hend, in the introduction of persons on the stage, 
speaking, feeling, and acting according to na- 
ture, that is, according to the impression of 
given circumstances on the passions and mind of 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 319 

man in those circumstances, but limited by the 
physical conditions of time and place, as to its 
external form, and to a certain dignity of atti- 
tude and expression, selection in the figures, 
and unity in their grouping, as in a statue or 
bas-relief. The second is the Gothic or ro- 
mantic, or as it might be called, the historical 
or poetical tragedy, and differs from the former, 
only in having a larger scope in the design and 
boldness in the execution ; that is, it is the dra- 
matic representation of nature and passion eman- 
cipated from the precise imitation of an actual 
event in place and time, from the same fastidi- 
ousness in the choice of the materials, and with 
the license of the epic and fanciful form added to 
it in the range of the subject and the decorations 
of language. This is particularly the style or 
school of Shakespear and of the best writers of 
the age of Elizabeth, and the one immediately 
following. Of this class, or genus, the tragedie 
hourgeoise is a variety, and the antithesis of the 
classical form. The third sort is the French or 
common-place rhetorical style, which is founded 
on the antique as to its form and subject-matter; 
but instead of individual nature, real passion, or 
imagination growing out of real passion and the 
circumstances of the speaker, it deals only in 
vague, imposing, and laboured declamations, or 
descriptions of nature, dissertations on the pas- 



320 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

sions, and pompous flourishes which never en- 
tered any head but the author's, have no exist- 
ence in nature which they pretend to identify, 
and are not dramatic at all, but purely didactic. 
The fourth and last is the German or paradoxical 
style, which differs from the others in represent- 
ing men as acting not from the impulse of feeling, 
or as debating common-place questions of mo- 
rality, but as the organs and mouth-pieces (that 
is, as acting, speaking, and thinking, under the 
sole influence) of certain extravagant speculative 
opinions, abstracted from all existing customs pre- 
judices and institutions. — It is my present busi- 
ness to speak chiefly of the first and last of these. 

Sophocles differs from Shakespear as a Doric 
portico does from Westminster Abbey. The 
principle of the one is simplicity and harmony, 
of the other richness and power. The one relies 
on form or proportion, the other on quantity and 
variety and prominence of parts. The one owes 
its charm to a certain union and regularity of 
feeling, the other adds to its effect from com- 
plexity and the combination of the greatest ex- 
tremes. The classical appeals to sense and 
habit : the Gothic or romantic strikes from no- 
velty, strangeness and contrast. Both are founded 
in essential and indestructible principles of hu- 
man nature. We may prefer the one to the 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 321 

other, as we chuse, but to set up an arbitrary 
and bigotted standard of excellence in conse- 
quence of this preference, and to exclude either 
one or the other from poetry or art, is to deny 
the existence of the first principles of the human 
mind, and to war with nature, which is the 
height of weakness and arrogance at once. — There 
are some observations on this subject in a late 
number of the Edinburgh Review, from which 
I shall here make a pretty long extract. 

" The most obvious distinction between the 
two styles, the classical and the romantic, is, 
that the one is conversant with objects that are 
grand or beautiful in themselves, or in conse- 
quence of obvious and universal associations ; 
the other, with those that are interesting only by 
the force of circumstances and imagination. A 
Grecian temple, for instance, is a classical ob- 
ject : it is beautiful in itself, and excites imme- 
diate admiration. But the ruins of a Gothic 
castle have no beauty or symmetry to attract the 
eye ; and yet they excite a more powerful and 
romantic interest, from the ideas with which they 
are habitually associated. Tf, in addition to this, 
we are told, that this is Macbeth's castle, the 
scene of the murder of Duncan, the interest will 
be instantly heightened to a sort of pleasing 
horror. The classical idea or form of any thing, 

v Y 



322 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

it may also be observed, remains always the 
same, and suggests nearly the same impressions ; 
but the associations of ideas belonging to the ro- 
mantic character may vary infinitely, and take 
in the whole range of nature and accident. An- 
tigone, in Sophocles, waiting near the grove of 
the Furies — Electra, in iEschylus, offering sa- 
crifice at the tomb of Agamemnon — are classical 
subjects, because the circumstances and the 
characters have a correspondent dignity, and an 
immediate interest, from their mere designation. 
Florimel, in Spenser, where she is described 
sitting on the ground in the Witch's hut, is not 
classical, though in the highest degree poetical 
and romantic : for the incidents and situation 
are in themselves mean and disagreeable, till 
they are redeemed by the genius of the poet, 
and converted, by the very contrast, into a source 
of the utmost pathos and elevation of sentiment. 
Othello's handkerchief is not classical, though 
c there was magic in the web :' — it is only a 
powerful instrument of passion and imagination. 
Even Lear is not classical ; for he is a poor crazy 
old man, who has nothing sublime about him 
but his afflictions, and who dies of a broken 
heart. 

" Schlegel somewhere compares the Furies of 
iEschylus to the Witches of Shakespear — we 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 323 

think without much reason. Perhaps Shake- 
spear has surrounded the Weird Sisters with as- 
sociations as terrible, and even more mysterious, 
strange, and fantastic, than the Furies of iEschy- 
lus ; but the traditionary beings themselves are 
not so petriflc. These are of marble, — their 
look alone must blast the beholder ; — those are 
of air, bubbles ; and though c so withered and 
so wild in their attire, 5 it is their spells alone 
which are fatal. They owe their power to me- 
taphysical aid : but the others contain all that is 
dreadful in their corporal figures. In this w r e 
see the distinct spirit of the classical and the 
romantic mythology. The serpents that twine 
round the head of the Furies are not to be trifled 
with, though they implied no preternatural 
power. The bearded Witches in Macbeth are 
in themselves grotesque and ludicrous, except as 
this strange deviation from nature staggers our 
imagination, and leads us to expect and to be- 
lieve in all incredible things. They appal the 
faculties by what they say or do ;— the others are 
intolerable, even to sight. 

M Our author is right in affirming, that the true 
way to understand the plays of Sophocles and 
iEschylus, is to study them before the groupes of 
the Niobe or the Laocoon. If we can succeed 
in explaining this analogy, we shall have solved 

y 2 



324 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

nearly the whole difficulty. For it is certain* 
that there are exactly the same powers of mind 
displayed in the poetry of the Greeks as in their 
statues. Their poetry is exactly what their 
sculptors might have written. Both are exqui- 
site imitations of nature ; the one in marble, the 
other in words. It is evident, that the Greek 
poets had the same perfect idea of the subjects 
they described, as the Greek sculptors had of 
the objects they represented ; and they give as 
much of this absolute truth of imitation, as can 
be given by words. But in this direct and 
simple imitation of nature, as in describing the 
form of a beautiful woman, the poet is greatly 
inferior to the sculptor; it is in the power of 
illustration, in comparing it to other things, and 
suggesting other ideas of beauty or love, that he 
has an entirely new source of imagination opened 
to him : and of this power, the moderns have 
made at least a bolder and more frequent use 
than the ancients. The description of Helen in 
Homer is a description of what might have 
happened and been seen, as ' that she moved 
with grace, and that the old men rose up with 
reverence as she passed ;' the description of Bel- 
phcebe in Spenser is a description of what was 
only visible to the eye of the poet. 

" Upon her eyelids many graces sat, 
Under the shadow of her even brows." 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 325 

The description of the soldiers going to battle 
in Shakespear, * all plumed like estriches, like 
eagles newly baited, wanton as goats, wild as 
young bulls/ is too bold, figurative, and profuse 
of dazzling images, for the mild, equable tone 
of classical poetry, which never loses sight of 
the object in the illustration. The ideas of the 
ancients were too exact and definite, too much 
attached to the material form or vehicle by which 
they were conveyed, to admit of those rapid 
combinations, those unrestrained flights of fancy, 
which, glancing from heaven to earth, unite the 
most opposite extremes, and draw the happiest 
illustrations from things the most remote. The 
two principles of imitation and imagination, in- 
deed, are not only distinct, but almost opposite. 

" The great difference, then, which we find 
between the classical and the romantic style, be- 
tween ancient and modern poetry, is, that the 
one more frequently describes things as they are 
interesting in themselves, — the other for the sake 
of the associations of ideas connected with them ; 
that the one dwells more on the immediate im- 
pressions of objects on the senses — the other on 
the ideas which they suggest to the imagination. 
The one is the poetry of form, the other of effect. 
The one gives only what is necessarily implied 
in the subject, the other all that can possibly 



326 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

arise out of it. The one seeks to identify the 
imitation with the external object, — clings to it, 
— is inseparable from it, — is either that or no- 
thing ; the other seeks to identify the original 
impression with whatever else, within the range 
of thought or feeling, can strengthen, relieve, 
adorn or elevate it. Hence the severity and 
simplicity of the Greek tragedy, which excluded 
every thing foreign or unnecessary to the subject, 
Hence the Unities : for, in order to identify the 
imitation as much as possible with the reality, 
and leave nothing to mere imagination, it was 
necessary to give the same coherence and con- 
sistency to the different parts of a story, as to the 
different limbs of a statue. Hence the beauty 
and grandeur of their materials ; for, deriving 
their power over the mind from the truth of the 
imitation, it was necessary that the subject 
which they made choice of, and from which they 
could not depart, should be in itself grand and 
beautiful. Hence the perfection of their execu- 
tion ; which consisted in giving the utmost har- 
mony, delicacy, and refinement to the details of 
a given subject. Now, the characteristic ex- 
cellence of the moderns is the reverse of all this. 
As, according to our author, the poetry of the 
Greeks is the same as their sculpture ; so, he 
says, our own more nearly resembles painting, — 
where the artist can relieve and throw back his 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 327 

figures at pleasure, — use a greater variety of 
contrasts, — and where light and shade, like the 
colours of fancy, are reflected on the different 
objects. The Muse of classical poetry should be 
represented as a beautiful naked figure: the 
Muse of modern poetry should be represented 
clothed, and with wings. The first has the ad- 
vantage in point of form ; the last in colour and 
motion. 

" Perhaps we may trace this difference to some- 
thing analogous in physical organization, situa- 
tion, religion, and manners. First, the physical 
organization of the Greeks seems to have been 
more perfect, more susceptible of external im- 
pressions, and more in harmony with external 
nature than ours, who have not the same advan- 
tages of climate and constitution. Born of a 
beautiful and vigorous race, with quick senses 
and a clear understanding, and placed under a 
mild heaven, they gave the fullest developement 
to their external faculties : and where all is per- 
ceived easily, every thing is perceived in har- 
mony and proportion. It is the stern genius of 
the North which drives men back upon their own 
resources, which makes them slow to perceive, 
and averse to feel, and which, by rendering them 
insensible to the single, successive impressions of 
things, requires their collective and combined 



328 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

force to rouse the imagination violently and un- 
equally. It should be remarked, however, that 
the early poetry of some of the Eastern nations 
has even more of that irregularity, wild enthu- 
siasm, and disproportioned grandeur, which has 
been considered as the distinguishing character 
of the Northern nations. 

" Again, a good deal may be attributed to the 
state of manners and political institutions. The 
ancient Greeks were warlike tribes encamped in 
cities. They had no other country than that 
which was enclosed within the walls of the town 
in which they lived. Each individual belonged, 
in the first instance, to the state ; and his rela- 
tions to it were so close, as to take away, in a 
great measure, all personal independence and 
free-will. Every one was mortised to his place 
in society, and had his station assigned him as 
part of the political machine, which could only 
subsist by strict subordination and regularity. 
Every man was, as it were, perpetually on duty, 
and his faculties kept constant watch and ward. 
Energy of purpose and intensity of observation 
became the necessary characteristics of such a 
state of society ; and the general principle com- 
municated itself from this ruling concern for the 
public, to morals, to art, to language, to every 
thing. — The tragic poets of Greece were among 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 329 

her best soldiers ; and it is no wonder that they 
were as severe in their poetry as in their disci- 
pline. Their swords and their styles carved out 
their way with equal sharpness. — After all, how- 
ever, the tragedies of Sophocles, which are the 
perfection of the classical style, are hardly trage- 
dies in our sense of the word*. They do not ex- 
hibit the extremity of human passion and suffer- 
ing. The object of modern tragedy is to repre- 
sent the soul utterly subdued as it were, or at 
least convulsed and overthrown by passion or 
misfortune. That of the ancients was to shew 
how the greatest crimes could be perpetrated 
with the least remorse, and the greatest calami- 
ties borne with the least emotion. Firmness of 
purpose and calmness of sentiment are their 
leading characteristics. Their heroes and he- 
roines act and suffer as if they were always in the 
presence of a higher power, or as if human life 
itself were a religious ceremony, performed in 
honour of the Gods and of the State. The mind 
is not shaken to its centre ; the whole being is 
not crushed or broken down. Contradictory 
motives are not accumulated ; the utmost force 
of imagination and passion is not exhausted to 
overcome the repugnance of the will to crime; 

* The difference in the tone of moral sentiment is the 
greatest of all others. 



330 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

the contrast and combination of outward acci- 
dents are not called in to overwhelm the mind 
with the whole weight of unexpected calamity. 
The dire conflict of the feelings, the desperate 
struggle with fortune, are seldom there. All is 
conducted with a fatal composure ; prepared and 
submitted to with inflexible constancy, as if Na- 
ture were only an instrument in the hands of Fate, 

*'' This state of things was afterwards continued 
under the Roman empire. In the ages of chivalry 
and romance, which, after a considerable inter- 
val, succeeded its dissolution, and which have 
stamped their character on modern genius and 
literature, all was reversed. Society was again 
resolved into its component parts ; and the world 
was, in a manner, to begin anew. The ties 
which bound the citizen and the soldier to the 
state being loosened, each person was thrown 
back into the circle of the domestic affections, 
or left to pursue his doubtful way to fame and 
fortune alone. This interval of time might be 
accordingly supposed to give birth to all that 
was constant in attachment, adventurous in 
action, strange, wild, and extravagant in in- 
vention. Human life took the shape of a busy, 
voluptuous dream, where the imagination was 
now lost amidst ' antres vast and deserts idle;' 
or suddenly transported to stately palaces, echo- 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 331 

ing with dance and song. In this uncertainty of 
events, this fluctuation of hopes and fears, all 
objects became dim, confused, and vague. Ma- 
gicians, dwarfs, giants, followed in the train of 
romance; and Orlando's enchanted sword, the 
horn which he carried with him, and which he 
blew thrice at Roncesvalles, and Rogero's wing- 
ed horse, were not sufficient to protect them in 
their unheard-of encounters, or deliver them from 
their inextricable difficulties. It was a return to 
the period of the early heroic ages ; but tempered 
by the difference of domestic manners, and the 
spirit of religion. The marked difference in the 
relation of the sexes arose from the freedom of 
choice in women ; which, from being the slaves 
of the will and passions of men, converted them 
into the arbiters of their fate, which introduced 
the modern system of gallantry, and first made 
love a feeling of the heart, founded on mutual 
affection and esteem. The leading virtues of 
the Christian religion, self-denial and generosity, 
assisted in producing the same effect. — Hence 
the spirit of chivalry, of romantic love, and 
honour ! 

" The mythology of the romantic poetry dif- 
fered from the received religion : both differed 
essentially from the classical. The religion or 
mythology of the Greeks was nearly allied to 



332 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

their poetry : it was material and definite. The 
Pagan system reduced the Gods to the human 
form, and elevated the powers of inanimate nature 
to the same standard. Statues carved out of the 
finest marble, represented the objects of their 
religious worship in airy porticos, in solemn 
temples, and consecrated groves. Mercury was 
seen f new-lighted on some heaven-kissing hill;' 
and the Naiad or Dryad came gracefully forth as 
the personified genius of the stream or wood. 
All was subjected to the senses. The Christian 
religion, on the contrary, is essentially spiritual 
and abstracted ; it is ' the evidence of things un- 
seen.' In the Heathen mythology, form is every 
where predominant; in the Christian, we find 
only unlimited, undefined power. The imagina- 
tion alone c broods over the immense abyss, 
and makes it pregnant.' There is, in the habi- 
tual belief of an universal, invisible principle 
of all things, a vastness and obscurity which 
confounds our perceptions, while it exalts our 
piety. A mysterious awe surrounds the doctrines 
of the Christian faith : the infinite is everywhere 
before us, whether we turn to reflect on what is 
revealed to us of the* divine nature or our own. 

" History, as well as religion, has contributed 
to enlarge the bounds of imagination : and both 
together, by shewing past and future objects at 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 333 

an interminable distance, have accustomed the 
mind to contemplate and take an interest in the 
obscure and shadowy. The ancients were more 
circumscribed within ' the ignorant present time, 
— spoke only their own language, — were con- 
versant only with their own customs, — were ac- 
quainted only with the events of their own his- 
tory. The mere lapse of time then, aided by 
the art of printing, has served to accumulate 
an endless mas& of mixed and contradictory 
materials; and, by extending our knowledge to 
a greater number of things, has made our par- 
ticular ideas less perfect and distinct. The 
constant reference to a former state of manners 
and literature is a marked feature in modern 
poetry. We are always talking of the Greeks 
and Romans ;—they never said any thing of us. 
This circumstance has tended to give a certain 
abstract elevation, and ethereal refinement to the 
mind, without strengthening it. We are lost 
in wonder at what has been done, and dare not 
think of emulating it. The earliest modern 
poets, accordingly, may be conceived to hail the 
glories of the antique world, dawning through 
the dark abyss of time ; while revelation, on the 
other hand, opened its path to the skies. So 
Dante represents himself as conducted by Virgil 
to the shades below ; while Beatrice welcomes 
him to the abodes of the blest." 



334 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

The French are the only people in modern 
Europe, who have professedly imitated the an- 
cients ; but from their being utterly unlike the 
Greeks or Romans, have produced a dramatic 
style of their own, which is neither classical nor 
romantic. The same article contains the follow- 
ing censure of this style : 

" The true poet identifies the reader with the 
characters he represents ; the French poet only 
identifies him with himself. There is scarcely 
a single page of their tragedy which fairly throws 
nature open to you. It is tragedy in masquerade. 
We never get beyond conjecture and reasoning — 
beyond the general impression of the situation of 
the persons — beyond general reflections on their 
passions — beyond general descriptions of objects. 
We never get at that something more, which is 
what we are in search of, namely, what we our- 
selves should feel in the same situations. The 
true poet transports you to the scene — you see 
and hear what is passing — you catch, from the 
lips of the persons concerned, what lies nearest 
to their hearts ; — the French poet takes you into 
his closet, and reads you a lecture upon it. The 
chef-d'ceuvres of their stage, then, are, at best, 
only ingenious paraphrases of nature. The dia- 
logue is a tissue of common-places, of laboured 
declamations on human life, of learned casuistry 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 335 

on the passions, on virtue and vice, which any 
one else might make just as well as the person 
speaking; and yet, what the persons themselves 
would say, is all we want to know, and all for 
which the poet puts them into those situations." 

After the Restoration, that is, after the return 
of the exiled family of the Stuarts from France, 
our writers transplanted this artificial, monoto- 
nous, and imposing common-place style into Eng- 
land, by imitations and translations, where it 
could not be expected to take deep root, and pro- 
duce wholesome fruits, and where it has indeed 
given rise to little but turgidity and rant in men 
of original force of genius, and to insipidity and 
formality in feebler copyists. Otway is the only 
writer of this school, who, in the lapse of a cen- 
tury and a half, has produced a tragedy (upon the 
classic or regular model) of indisputable excel- 
lence and lasting interest. The merit of Venice 
Preserved is not confined to its effect on the 
stage, or to the opportunity it affords for the dis- 
play of the powers of the actors in it, of a Jaf- 
fler, a Pierre, a Belvidera: it reads as well in 
the closet, and loses little or none of its power of 
rivetting breathless attention, and stirring the 
deepest yearnings of affection. It has passages 
of great beauty in themselves (detached from 
the fable) touches of true nature and pathos, 



336 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

though none -equal or indeed comparable to what 
we meet with in Shakespear and other writers 
of that day ; but the awful suspense of the situa- 
tions, the conflict of duties and passions, the in- 
timate bonds that unite the characters together, 
and that are violently rent asunder like the part- 
ing of soul and body, the solemn march of the 
tragical events to the fatal catastrophe that 
winds up and closes over all, give to this pro- 
duction of Otway's Muse a charm and power 
that bind it like a spell on the public mind, and 
have made it a proud and inseparable adjunct of 
the English stage. Thomson has given it due 
honour in his feeling verse, when he exclaims, 

" See o'er the stage the Ghost of Hamlet stalks, 
Othello rages, poor Monimia mourns, 
And Belvidera pours her soul in love." 

There is a mixture of effeminacy, of luxurious 
and cowardly indulgence of his wayward sensi- 
bility, in Jaffier's character, which is, however, 
finely relieved by the bold intrepid villainy and 
contemptuous irony of Pierre, while it is excused 
by the difficulties of his situation, and the love- 
liness of Belvidera : but in the Orphan there is 
little else but this voluptuous effeminacy of sen- 
timent and mawkish distress, which strikes di- 
rectly at the root of that mental fortitude and he- 
roic cast of thought which alone makes tragedy 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 337 

endurable — that renders its sufferings pathetic, 
or its struggles sublime. Yet there are lines and 
passages in it of extreme tenderness and beauty; 
and few persons, I conceive (judging from my own 
experience ) will read it at a certain time of life 
without shedding tears over it as fast as the 
" Arabian trees their medicinal gums." Otway 
always touched the reader, for he had himself a 
heart. We may be sure that he blotted his page 
often with his tears, on which so many drops 
have since fallen from glistening eyes, " that sa-< 
cred pity had engendered there." He had sus^ 
ceptibility of feeling and warmth of genius ; but 
he had not equal depth of thought or loftiness of 
imagination, and indulged his mere sensibility 
too much, yielding to the immediate impression 
or emotion excited in his own mind, and not 
placing himself enough in the minds and situa- 
tions of others, or following the workings of na- 
ture sufficiently with keenness of eye and strength 
of will into its heights and depths, its strong- 
holds as well as its weak sides. The Orphan 
was attempted to be revived some time since 
with the advantage of Miss O'Neill playing the 
part of Aionimia. It however did not entirely 
succeed (as it appeared at the time) from the plot 
turning all on one circumstance, and that hardly 
of a nature to be obtruded on the public no-? 
tice. The incidents and characters are taken 



338 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

almost literally from an old play by Robert 
Tailor, called Hog hath lost his Pearl. 

Addison's Cato, in spite of Dennis's criticism, 
still retains possession of the stage with all its 
unities. My love and admiration for Addison is 
as great as any person's, let that other person be 
who he will ; but it is not founded on his Cato, 
in extolling which Whigs and Tories contended 
in loud applause. The interest of this play (bat- 
ing that shadowy regret that always clings to 
and nickers round the form of free antiquity) is 
confined to the declamation, which is feeble in 
itself, and not heard on the stage. I have seen 
Mr. Kemble in this part repeat the Soliloquy on 
Death without a line being distinctly heard ; no- 
thing was observable but the thoughtful motion 
of his lips, and the occasional extension of his 
hand in sign of doubts suggested or resolved ; 
yet this beautiful and expressive dumb-show, 
with the propriety of his costume, and the ele- 
gance of his attitude and figure, excited the most 
lively interest, and kept attention even more on 
the stretch, to catch every imperfect syllable or 
speaking gesture. There is nothing, however, 
in the play to excite ridicule, or shock by ab- 
surdity, except the love-scenes which are passed 
over as what the spectator has no proper concern 
with : and however feeble or languid the inte- 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 339 

rest produced by a dramatic exhibition, unless 
there is some positive stumbling-block thrown 
in the way, or gross offence given to an audience, 
it is generally suffered to linger on to a eutha- 
nasia, instead of dying a violent and premature 
death. If an author (particularly an author of 
high reputation) can contrive to preserve a uni- 
form degree of insipidity, he is nearly sure of im- 
punity. Jt is the mixture of great faults with 
splendid passages (the more striking from the 
contrast) that is inevitable damnation. Every 
one must have seen the audience tired out and 
watching for an opportunity to wreak their ven- 
geance on the author, and yet not able to accom- 
plish their wish, because no one part seemed 
more tiresome or worthless than another. The 
philosophic mantle of Addison's Cato, when it no 
longer spreads its graceful folds on the shoulders 
of John Kemble, will I fear fall to the ground ; 
nor do I think Mr. Kean likely to pick it up again, 
with dauntless ambition or stoic pride, like that 
of Coriolanus. He could not play Cato (at least 
I think not) for the same reason that he will play 
Coriolanus. He can always play a living man ; 
he cannot play a lifeless statue. 

Dryden's plays have not come down to us, ex- 
cept in the collection of his printed works. The 
last of them that was on the list of regular acting 

z2 



340 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

plays was Don Sebastian. The Mask of Arthur 
and Emmeline was the other day revived at one 
of our theatres, without much success. Alexan- 
der the Great is by Lee, who wrote some things 
in- conjunction with Dryden, and who had far 
more power and passion of an irregular and tur- 
bulent kind, bordering upon constitutional mor- 
bidity, and who might have done better things 
(as we see from his OEdipus) had not his genius 
been perverted and rendered worse than abortive 
by carrying the vicious manner of his age to the 
greatest excess. Dry den's plays are perhaps the 
fairest specimen of what this manner was. I 
do not know how to describe it better than by 
saying that it is "one continued and exagge- 
rated common-place. All the characters are put 
into a swaggering attitude of dignity, and tricked 
out in the pomp of ostentatious drapery. The 
images are extravagant, yet not far-fetched; they 
are outrageous caricatures of obvious thoughts : 
the language oscillates between bombast and 
bathos: the characters are noisy pretenders to 
virtue, and shallow boasters in vice ; the versifi- 
cation is laboured and monotonous, quite unlike 
the admirably free and flowing rhyme of his sa- 
tires, in which he felt the true inspiration of his 
subject, and could find modulated sounds to ex- 
press it. Dryden had no dramatic genius either 
in tragedy or comedy. In his plays he mistakes 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 341 

blasphemy for sublimity, and ribaldry for wit. 
He had so little notion of his own powers, that 
he has put Milton's Paradise Lost into dramatic 
rhyme to make Adam look like a fine gentleman ; 
and has added a double love-plot to the Tem- 
pest, to " relieve the killing languor and over- 
laboured lassitude" of that solitude of the imagi- 
nation, in which Shakespear had left the inhabi- 
tants of his Enchanted Island. I will give two 
passages out of Don Sebastian in illustration of 
what I have said above of this mock-heroic style. 

Almeyda advising Sebastian to fly from the 
power of Muley-Moluch addresses him thus: 

" Leave then the luggage of your fate behind ; 
To make your flight more easy, leave Almeyda. 
Nor think me left a base, ignoble prey, 
Exposed to this inhuman tyrant's lust. 
My virtue is a guard beyond my strength ; 
And death my last defence within ray call." 

Sebastian answers very gravely : 

** Death may be called in vain, and cannot come : 
Tyrants can tye him up from your relief: 
Nor has a Christian privilege to die. 
Alas, thou art too young in thy new faith : 
Brutus and Cato might discharge their souls, 
And give them furloughs for another world : 
But we, like sentries, are obliged to stand, 
In starless nights, and wait the appointed hour." 



342 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

Sebastian then urging her to prevent the 
tyrant's designs by an instant marriage, she says, 

" Tis late to join, when we must part so soon. 

Sebastian. Nay, rather let us haste it, e'er we part : 
Our souls for want of that acquaintance here 
May wander in the starry walks above, 
And, forced on worse companions, miss ourselves." 

In the scene with Muley-Moluch where she 
makes intercession for Sebastian's life, she says, 

" My father's, mother's, brother's death I pardon : 
That's somewhat sure, a mighty sum of murder, 
Of innocent and kindred blood struck off. 
My prayers and penance shall discount for these, 
And beg of Heaven to charge the bill on me: 
Behold what price I offer, and how dear 
To buy Sebastian's life. 

Emperom. Let after-reckonings trouble fearful fools; 
I'll stand the trial of those trivial crimes : 
But since thou begg'st me to prescribe my terms, 
The only I can offer are thy love; 
And this one day of respite to resolve. 
Grant or deny, for thy next word is Fate ; 
And Fate is deaf to Prayer. 

Almeyda, May heav'n be so 
At thy last breath to thine : I curse thee not : 
For who can better curse the plague or devil 
Than to be what they are % That curse be thine. 
Now do not speak, Sebastian, for you need not, 
But die, for I resign your life: Look heav'n, 
Almeyda dooms her dear Sebastian's death 
But is there heaven, for I begin to doubt? 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 343 

The skies are hush'd ; no grumbling thunders roll: 
Now take your swing, ye impious : sin, unpunished. 
Eternal Providence seems over-watch'd, 

And with a slumbering nod assents to murder 

Farewell, my lost Sebastian ! 
I do not beg, I challenge Justice now : 
O Powers, if Kings be your peculiar care, 
Why plays this wretch with your prerogative? 
Now flash him dead, now crumble him to ashes: 
Or henceforth live confined in your own palace; 
And look not idly out upon a world 
That is no longer yours." 

These passages, with many like them, will be 
found in the first scene of the third act. 

The occasional striking expressions, such as 
that of souls at the resurrection " fumbling for 
their limbs," are the language of strong satire 
and habitual disdain, not proper to tragic or 
serious poetry. 

After Dryden there is no writer that has ac- 
quired much reputation as a tragic poet for the 
next hundred years. In the hands of his succes- 
sors, the Smiths, the Hughes, the Hills, the 
Murphys, the Dr. Johnsons, of the reigns of 
George I. and II., tragedy seemed almost afraid 
to know itself, and certainly did not stand where 
it had done a hundred and fifty years before. It 
had degenerated by regular and studied gradations 



344 ON ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE. 

into the most frigid, insipid, and insignificant of 
all things. It faded to a shade, it tapered to a 
point, " fine by degrees, and beautifully less." 
I do not believe there is a single play of this 
period which could be read with any degree of 
interest or even patience, by a modern reader of 
poetry, if we except the productions of Southern, 
Lillo and Moore, the authors of the Gamester, 
Oroonoko, and Fatal Curiosity, and who instead 
of mounting on classic stilts and making rhetori- 
cal flourishes, went out of the established road to 
seek for truth and nature and effect in the com- 
monest life and lowest situations. In short, the 
only tragedy of this period is that to which their 
productions gave a name, and which has been 
called in contradistinction by the French, and 
with an express provision for its merits and de- 
fects, the tragedie bmrgeoise. An anecdote is told 
of the first of these writers by Gray, in one of his 
Letters, dated from Horace Wal pole's country- 
seat, about the year 1740, who says, Cf Old Mr. 
Southern is here, who is now above 80 : a very 
agreeable old man, at least I think so when I 
look in his face, and think of Isabella and 
Oroonoko." It is pleasant to see these traits of 
attachment and gratitude kept up in successive 
generations of poets to one another, and also to 
find that the same works of genius that have " sent 
ms weeping to our beds," and made us "rise sadder 



ON THE GERMAN DRAMA. 345 

and wiser on the morrow morn," have excited 
just the same fondness of affection in others be- 
fore we were born ; and it is to be hoped, will 
do so, after we are dead. Our best feelings, and 
those on which we pride ourselves most, and 
with most reason, are perhaps the commonest of 
all others. 

Up to the present reign, and during the best 
part of it (with another solitary exception, 
Douglas, which with all its feebleness and ex- 
travagance, has in its style and sentiments 
a good deal of poetical and romantic beauty) 
tragedy wore the face of the Goddess of Dul- 
ness in the Dunciad, serene, torpid, sickly, le- 
thargic, and affected, till it was roused from its 
trance by the blast of the French Revolution, 
and by the loud trampling of the German Pe- 
gasus on the English stage, which now appeared 
as pawing to get free from its ancient trammels, 
and rampant shook off the incumbrance of all 
former examples, opinions, prejudices, and prin- 
ciples. If we have not been alive and well since 
this period, at least we have been alive, and it 
is better to be alive than dead. The German 
tragedy (and our own, which is only a branch 
of it) aims at effect, and produces it often in the 
highest degree ; and it does this by going all the 
lengths not only of instinctive feeling, but of 



346 ON THE GERMAN DRAMA. 

speculative opinion, and startling the hearer by 
overturning all the established maxims of society, 
and setting at nought all the received rules of 
composition. It cannot be said of this style that 
in it " decorum is the principal thing." It is 
the violation of decorum, that is its first and 
last principle, the beginning, middle, and end. 
It is an insult and defiance to Aristotle's definition 
of tragedy. The action is not grave, but extrava- 
gant : the fable is not probable, but improbable : 
the favourite characters are not only low, but 
vicious : the sentiments are such as do not be- 
come the person into whose mouth they are put, 
nor that of any other person : the language is 
a mixture of metaphysical jargon and flaring 
prose : the moral is immorality. In spite of all 
this, a German tragedy is a good thing. It 
is a fine hallucination : it is a noble madness, and 
as there is a pleasure in madness, which none 
but madmen know, so there is a pleasure in read- 
ing a German play to be found in no other. The 
world have thought so: they go to see the 
Stranger, they go to see Lovers' Vows and Pi- 
zarro, they have their eyes wide open all the 
time, and almost cry them out before they come 
away, and therefore they go again. There is 
something in the style that hits the temper of 
men's minds; that, if it does not hold themirrour 
up to nature, yet " shews the very age and body of 



ON THE GERMAN DRAMA. 347 

the time its form and pressure." It embodies, 
it sets off and aggrandizes in all the pomp of 
action, in all the vehemence of hyperbolical de- 
clamation, in scenery, in dress, in music, in the 
glare of the senses, and the glow of sympathy, the 
extreme opinions which are floating in our time, 
and which have struck their roots deep and wide 
below the surface of the public mind. We are 
no longer as formerly heroes in warlike enter- 
prise; martyrs to religious faith; but we are all 
the partisans of a political system, and devotees 
to some theory of moral sentiments. The mo- 
dern style of tragedy is not assuredly made up of 
pompous common-place, but it is a tissue of phi- 
losophical, political, and moral paradoxes. I 
am not saying whether these paradoxes are true 
or false : all that I mean to state is, that they are 
utterly at variance with old opinions, with esta- 
blished rules and existing institutions ; that it is 
this tug of w r ar between the inert prejudice and 
the startling novelty which is to batter it down 
(first on the stage of the theatre, and afterwards 
on the stage of the world) that gives the excite- 
ment and the zest. We see the natural always 
pitted against the social man ; and the majo- 
rity who are not of the privileged classes, take 
part with the former. The hero is a sort of me- 
taphysical Orson, armed not with teeth and a 
club, but with hard sayings and unanswerable 



348 ON THE GERMAN DRAMA. 

sentences, ticketted and labelled with extracts and 
mottos from the modern philosophy. This com- 
mon representative of mankind is a natural son 
of some feudal lord, or wealthy baron : and he 
comes to claim as a matter of course and of sim- 
ple equity, the rich reversion of the title and 
estates to which he has a right by the bounty of 
nature and the privilege of his birth. This pro- 
duces a very edifying scene, and the proud, un- 
feeling, unprincipled baron is hooted from the 
stage. A young woman, a sempstress, or a 
waiting-maid of much beauty and accomplish- 
ment, who would not think of matching with a 
fellow of low birth or fortune for the world, falls 
in love with the heir of an immense estate out of 
pure regard to his mind and person, and thinks 
it strange that rank and opulence do not follow 
as natural appendages in the train of sentiment. 
A lady of fashion, wit, and beauty, forfeits the 
sanctity of her marriage-vow, but preserves the 
inviolability of her sentiments and character, 

" Pure in the last recesses of the mind"— 

and triumphs over false opinion and prejudice, 
like gold out of the fire, the brighter for the ordeal. 
A young man turns robber and captain of a gang 
of banditti ; and the wonder is to see the heroic 
ardour of his sentiments, his aspirations after 
the most godlike goodness and unsullied reputa- 



ON THE GERMAN DRAMA. 349 

lion, working their way through the repulsive- 
ness of his situation, and making use of fortune 
only as a foil to nature. The principle of con- 
trast and contradiction is here made use of, and 
no other. All qualities are reversed : virtue is 
always at odds with vice, " which shall be 
which :" the internal character and external situa- 
tion, ilie actions and the sentiments, are never 
in accord : you are to judge of every thing 
by contraries : those that exalt themselves are 
abased, and those that should be humbled are 
exalted: the high places and strongholds of 
power and greatness are crumbled in the dust ; 
opinions totter, feelings are brought into ques- 
tion, and the world is turned upside down, with 
all things in it ! — " There is some soul of good- 
ness in things evil" — and there is some soul of 
goodness in all this. The world and every thing 
in it is not just what it ought to be, or what it 
pretends to be ; or such extravagant and prodi- 
gious paradoxes would be driven from the stage 
— would meet with sympathy in no human breast, 
high or low, young or old. There's something 
rotten in the state of Denmark. Opinion is 
not truth : appearance is not reality : power is 
not beneficence : rank is not wisdom : nobility 
is not the only virtue : riches are not happiness : 
desert and success are different things : actions 
do hot always speak the character any more 



350 ON THE GERMAN DRAMA. 

than words. We feel this, and do justice to the 
romantic extravagance of the German Muse. 

In Germany, where this outre style of treating 
every thing established and adventitious was 
carried to its height, there were, as we learn 
from the Sorrows of Werter, seven-and-twenty 
ranks in society, each raised above the other, 
and of which the one above did not speak to the 
one below it. Is it wonderful that the poets and 
philosophers of Germany, the discontented men 
of talent, who thought and mourned for them- 
selves and their fellows, the Goethes, the Les- 
sings, the Schillers, the Kotzebues, felt a sudden 
and irresistible impulse by a convulsive effort 
to tear aside this factitious drapery of society, 
and to throw off that load of bloated prejudice, 
of maddening pride and superannuated folly, that 
pressed down every energy of their nature and 
stifled the breath of liberty, of truth and ge- 
nius in their bosoms? These Titans of our 
days tried to throw off the dead weight that en- 
cumbered them, and in so doing, warred not 
against heaven, but against earth. The same 
writers (as far as I have seen) have made the 
only incorrigible Jacobins, and their school of 
poetry is the only real school of Radical Reform. 

In reasoning, truth and soberness may pre- 



ON THE GERMAN DRAMA. 351 

vail, on which side soever they meet : but in 
works of imagination novelty has the advantage 
over prejudice; that which is striking and un- 
heard-of, over that which is trite and known 
before, and that which gives unlimited scope to 
the indulgence of the feelings and the passions 
(whether erroneous or not ) over that which im- 
poses a restraint upon them. 

I have half trifled with this subject ; and I believe 
I have done so 5 because I despaired of finding lan- 
guage for some old rooted feelings I have about it, 
which a theory could neither give or can it take 
away. The Robbers was the first play I ever read : 
and the effect it produced upon me was the great- 
est. It stunned me like a blow, and I have not 
recovered enough from it to describe how it was. 
There are impressions which neither time nor 
circumstances can efface. Were I to live much 
longer than I have any chance of doing, the 
books which I read when I was young, I can 
never forget. Five-and-twenty years have elapsed 
sfrnee 1 first read the translation of the Robbers, 
but they have not blotted the impression from 
my mind : it is here still, an old dweller in the 
chambers of the brain. The scene in particular 
in which Moor looks through his tears at the 
evening sun from the mountain's brow, and says 
in his despair, " It was my wish like him to live, 



352 ON THE GERMAN DRAMA. 

like him to die : it was an idle thought, a boy's 
conceit," took fast hold of my imagination, and 
that sun has to me never set ! The last interview in 
Don Carlos between the two lovers, in which the 
injured bride struggles to burst the prison-house 
of her destiny, in which her hopes and youth lie 
coffined, and buried, as it were, alive, under the 
oppression of unspeakable anguish, 1 remember 
gave me a deep sense of suffering and a strong 
desire after good, which has haunted me ever 
since. I do not like Schiller's later style so well. 
His Wallenstein, which is admirably and almost 
literally translated by Mr. Coleridge, is stately, 
thoughtful, and imaginative : but where is the 
enthusiasm, the throbbing of hope and fear, the 
mortal struggle between the passions ; as if all 
the happiness or misery of a life were crowded 
into a moment, and the die was to be cast that 
instant? Kotzebue's best work I read first in 
Cumberland's imitation of it in the Wheel of 
Fortune ; and I confess that that style of senti- 
ment which seems to make of life itself a long- 
drawn endless sigh, has something in it that 
pleases me, in spite of rules and criticism. 
Goethe's tragedies are (those that I have seen of 
them, his Count Egmont, Stella, &c.) constructed 
upon the second or inverted manner of the Ger- 
man stage, with a deliberate design to avoid all 
possible effect and interest, and this object is 



ON THE GERMAN DRAMA. 353 

completely accomplished. He is however spoken 
of with enthusiasm almost amounting to idolatry 
by his countrymen, and those among ourselves who 
import heavy German criticism into this country 
in shallow flat-bottomed unwieldy intellects. 
Madame De Stael speaks of one passage in his 
Iphigenia, where he introduces a fragment of an 
old song, which the Furies are supposed to sing 
to Tantalus in hell, reproaching him with the 
times when he sat with the Gods at their golden 
tables, and with his after-crimes that hurled him 
from heaven, at which he turns his eyes from his 
children and hangs his head in mournful silence. 
This is the true sublime. Of all his works I like 
his Werter best, nor would I part with it at a 
venture, even for the Memoirs of Anastasius the 
Greek, whoever is the author ; nor ever cease to 
think of the times, " when in the fine summer 
evenings they saw the frank, noble-minded en- 
thusiast coming up from the valley,' 1 nor of " the 
high grass that by the light of the departing sun 
waved in the breeze over his grave." 

But I have said enough to give an idea of 
this modern style, compared with our own early 
Dramatic Literature, of which I had to treat. — 
I have done : and if I have done no better, the 
fault has been in me, not in the subject. My 
liking to this grew with my knowledge of it : 

a a 



354 ON THE GERMAN DRAMA. 

but so did my anxiety to do it justice. I some- 
how felt it as a point of honour not to make 
my hearers think less highly of some of these 
old writers than I myself did of them. If I have 
praised an author, it was because I liked him: 
if I have quoted a passage, it was because it 
pleased me in the reading : if I have spoken 
contemptuously of any one, it has been reluc- 
tantly. It is no easy task, that a writer, even in 
so humble a class as myself, takes upon him ; he 
is scouted and ridiculed if he fails ; and if he 
succeeds, the enmity and cavils and malice with 
which he is assailed, are just in proportion to 
his success. The coldness and jealousy of his 
friends not unfrequently keep pace with the ran- 
cour of his enemies. They do not like you a 
bit the better for fulfilling the good opinion they 
always entertained of you. They would wish 
you to be always promising a great deal, and 
doing nothing, that they may answer for the 
performance. That shows their sagacity and 
does not hurt their vanity. An author wastes his 
time in painful study and obscure researches, to 
gain a little breath of popularity, meets with 
nothing but vexation and disappointment in 
ninety-nine instances out of a hundred; or when 
he thinks to grasp the luckless prize, finds it not 
worth the trouble — the perfume of a minute, 
fleeting as a shadow, hollow as a sound ; " as 



ON XHE GERMAN DRAMA. 355 

often got without merit as lost without deserv- 
ing." He thinks that the attainment of acknow- 
ledged excellence will secure him the expression 
of those feelings in others, which the image and 
hope of it had excited in his own breast, but in- 
stead of that, he meets with nothing (or scarcely 
nothing) but squint-eyed suspicion, idiot wonder, 
and grinning scorn. — It seems hardly worth 
while to have taken all the pains he has been at 
for this ! 

In youth we borrow patience from our future 
years : the spring of hope gives us courage to 
act and suffer. A cloud is upon our onward 
path, and we fancy that ail is sunshine beyond 
it. The prospect seems endless, because we do 
not know the end of it. We think that life is 
long, because art is so, and that, because we 
iiave much to do, it is well worth doing : or that 
no exertions can be too great, no sacrifices too 
painful, to overcome the difficulties we have to 
encounter. Life is a continued struggle to be 
what we are not, and to do what we cannot. 
But as we approach the goal, we draw in the 
reins; the impulse is less, as we have not so 
far to go; as we see objects nearer, we become 
less sanguine in the pursuit : it is not the de- 
spair of not attaining, so much as knowing that 
there is nothing worth obtaining, and the fear of 

a a2 



356 ON THE GERMAN DRAMA. 

having nothing left even to wish for, that damps 
our ardour and relaxes our efforts ; and if the 
mechanical habit did not increase the facility, 
would, I believe, take away all inclination or 
power to do any thing. We stagger on the few 
remaining paces to the end of our journey ; make 
perhaps one final effort; and are glad when 
our task is done ! 



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